REX Recommends - Major General John Howard

0:00This is a podcast from Rover. Rover will exchange. With Natspeed. Internet till the cars come on. Major General John Howard, thank you for doing this. Thanks for coming on the program. What pleasure. Great to be here. For the listeners out there, I'm just going to go through something of a rap sheet and it's not for your benefit. You know what you've done in your life, but just to set the context for people. You've had a 40-year military career across a number of different countries. You know, the world you might say, you're now a consultant at the source consultancy helping businesses navigate global politics and influential forces, which is the key reason we've got you on the program today. I've seen you fellow as well at the New Zealand initiative, which is a think tank. Former Deputy Director at the US Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington, not bad for a bloke born in Hokka Ticca, went to school in Nelson and enjoyed a bit of hunting and fishing in his spare time. So once again, thank you. And I see you've been in the news a bit in the last couple of

1:01days. It's all around defence spending for New Zealand, which is very much on the table at the moment. No small part, thanks to yourself. Yeah, I have launched another paper, my third in a series at the initiative this week, through a webinar, but it was picked up pretty much across media, mainstream media. ZB Talkback yesterday, I think, and then business to business to establish an article that was based on that paper. So the whole argument there was not the importance of defence, but the importance of national security and economic security, which I'm sure your listeners would be interested in. Very much so. Why is it important there that we spend on defence? So fundamentally, you know, we've been living for the last 80 years, what I call a holiday from history. And as a result of that over the last 40 years during my service, we have allowed our defence force to erode, evaporate and degrade. And we've forgotten that fundamentally the defence force is not

2:01about defending the physical realm of New Zealand, but it's defending our national interests. And, you know, for your listeners, this is the economic issue. Economic security is the foundation of national security, and national security is everybody's business. But that's stopped being a discussion at the, you know, in the milking shed and in the very sharing shed, probably with our grandparents, no longer at the kitchen table, do we talk about national security interests. And now, the world is not the place that you hope it will be. So it's time to think a little bit differently, but more importantly, invest back in our defence forces because they are in a waffles state and make sure that we are ready for what we know is coming. So is this a product really of this, what some people quite rightly call an unprecedented error of peace, really? The post-World War II era, we didn't really have to worry we had gone through the world wars and things were relatively stable. There was a good period of economic prosperity for a couple of decades. Do we just get a bit complacent, do you think?

3:01I think we got very complacent. The end of the second world war set the conditions for the cold war, and the cold war was real just well beyond the realm of New Zealand and people's personal experience. So we went to a professional volunteer force and we just used what they call the piece that isn't dividend. So we just stopped investing in military hardware, military infrastructure, military training and military mindset. And as a result, we've got a very thin eroded defence force of today. And that is not just in the military sense, but the diplomatic sense where our missions are and all of that links to trade because trade comes from diplomatic engagements. Trade comes from people wanting to talk to you about their concerns. And it's underpinned today by the really complex and the way that I describe it. It's the decade of disruption. And that started in early 22 with Putin's second invasion of Ukraine. So we're well into this decade of disruption.

4:02I was having a look before at a few facts and figures around our defence capabilities. You might say, 2027, I think, has been highlighted as a bit of a crunch year. When we look at those ANZAC class frigates as well, near the end of their life. What do we do there? What's the risk in not doing anything? Yeah, so that was my previous paper that I wrote called Adrift through the initiative. You can find that online. I sound like a consultant and I hate that word consultant. So I'm struggling for the listeners. I'm struggling with this life after uniform service. But the frigates are not getting close to their end of useful life. They're past that. We've extended them. We have two. And fundamentally my belief in argument based on what I've seen in the world and where I worked at central command for two years when we were planning military operations in the Middle East at scale. Two frigates is not a capability. Go and talk to you, anyone on a farm, two tractors doesn't give you a tractor all year round.

5:05Three might, four will. But you've got to have the right person driving the tractor. And you've got to have the right trailer with the right gear to feed out. If you're thinking about what is the capability you want, we're going to have to make some really hard decisions next year. And it's going to come to a head when we start talking about Navy capability because it's frigates and its autonomous systems and its satellites and intelligence and everything that makes a modern frigate work fight and survive. So this is important when we look at the frigates and I guess trade in terms of the sea. So you've also written in that previous report, a draft around 85% of New Zealand's goods exports and 73% of goods imports travel by sea. It's worth $82.7 billion annually. So I mean, if you do, if you know nothing else, but those numbers, that paints a picture. It does. And let me bring it starkly home to listeners when we talk about what does this reality mean.

6:08So yes, we've got two really old frigates. We've also got an even older naval base in it, Devonport. It's a hundred-year-old infrastructure. We have no dry dock in New Zealand. So none of our shipping, military, domestic, tourism, international trade has anywhere to go for proper refit. So this is really a strategic gap. And as we've said, all of our imports and exports go by sea. That's a maritime domain awareness. We need to know where those ships are. Are they under duress, under the underpirecy? Have they been attacked, detained? And how do we deter anyone that might like to interfere? Not just with those trade routes, but those things that are in it. Our undersea cables, our rare earth and precious metals. You know, the sovereign economic exclusion zone is the fourth largest in the world. It's gargantuan. And here we sit thinking that two old frigates and a couple of p8s can actually give maritime domain awareness. Just think if everyone goes fishing in the summer holidays.

7:10It's pretty easy to find somewhere where someone's not looking. And that's close by. So imagine how dangerous it's going to be as the world gets more complex. So the counter-argument will be from a lot of people. As that look, we've got a number of problems. We're in massive debt as a country. We've got a cost of living crisis there. Why not? Should we spend money on war games and things like that? Yeah. I imagine you've been confronted with one or two of those arguments over your time, John. Since the day I joined it, I mean, people who... It's wonderful that we live in this country where we do. I love it. And I've served it for my working life. We have lived under the protection of bigger partners, security partners since World War II. And our free trade didn't just happen. And our 80 years of prosperity didn't just happen because we're good people. We play good rugby and we like to take the mickey out of the people across the other side of the Tasman. The reality here is those freedoms were bought and played for in blood and treasure.

8:12The money we're talking about today that this government has thankfully allocated is $12 billion of which $9 billion is new over the next four to six years. It's an aspiration. I've not yet agreed for what happens after the 8th of November. And the purchases that they're looking at, they are not glamorous. New frigates and increases for army capabilities. And then talking about high tech, so drones, satellite capabilities. These are not glamorous. These are very much run of the mill modern technologies that the rest of the world uses. I've had this discussion before about no one's going to attack us. I guess we're okay if we leave everyone alone will be okay. Well, that paper I published this week is very clear when it talks about freedom is only for those that have the courage to defend it. And if you think that someone doesn't want our resources, our way of living and the fact that we are... I never described New Zealand as a small country.

9:12We're a large nation sparsely populated. We're bigger than the United Kingdom. And when you throw down our economic exclusion zone, that's bigger than continental Australia. So, have a think about changing the way we view ourselves and how attractive we might be to somebody else. That's an interesting point because the thing that's always raised when it comes to New Zealand is where safe is houses down here geographically, small population. No one's going to care. We're safe tucked away down here. That's an argument that I would suggest 90 out of 100 people, 9 out of 10, whatever, how have you on a frame it would come back to you with that. Yeah, yeah, there they would. So, let me give you some harsh reality. Two years ago, China signed a security deal with the Solomon Islands. And 12 months after that, Chinese Navy steamed into the Tasman Sea between us in New Zealand and commenced live firing with little to no announcement. Live firing of naval combatant capabilities with their most capable naval destroyer.

10:15And on the 6th of July this year, the Chinese Navy launched what we call a subsurface into continental ballistic missile. A missile that was capable of delivering chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high explosives. And they fired that into the Pacific Free, the nuclear-free Pacific area. That was not a test. It was a hard demonstration. And if you think that there is not Chinese influence or other state actors at play in New Zealand, then I draw your attention to the Director General of the SIS's threat assessment that came out less than six, seven weeks ago. There is a harsh reality to how we live and how we attract if we are to other people. And this is not about making a binary decision against one superpower, against another superpower. This is just being clear-eyed about the world we live in. And as I've said on previous media engagements, we don't live in a world that we hope will be nice. We have the world that we live in and we have to be prepared for it.

11:15And 2% of GDP, let's be quite open about what Western Europe is going through. So Western Europe last year, 12 months ago in November, agreed to spend 5% of GDP. Our agreement at the moment in parliament is we'll spend 2% in six to eight years. And we shouldn't be surprised when people call us out for not pulling our weight. Which has been done. The other thing about New Zealand, of course, is, you know, its food producing capacity is going to be too of great interest to somebody, you know, just from a basic, you know, survival and production mentality. Of course it is. Now look, we produce about enough food for 40 million people. And we've only got a feed of 5 million people. So we've got an advantage. We've also got some significant precious metals and rare earth elements. I look at the snowy creek mine that's, or snowy river, I think they call it now, down back of Reefton that's opened up again with our mining gold to the level that we did during World War II.

12:16And I know that because my mother's family comes from down there and they're all mining was in their blood. And you know, we produce gold from there during World War II, which paid for the weapons that we needed, why we had to fight for our survival. There are challenges out there, but you know, again, the world is not what we hope it is, what we hope it will be. And we need to think about it from a whole of government, whole of nation, point of view. You point about trading. So we produce a lot of primary produce. Your list is will be all over that. You're really going to have a good look at where fertiliser comes from. Now, clearly, you know, the key ingredients coming out of the Middle East have been put on hold delayed and other things have happened. The price of software has gone up horrifically in the last six months. And when I spoke to one senior government official in the Middle East, they keep saying, oh, we're shocked at the price of this. How can you be shocked at the price of software's gone up when it's a key ingredient and explosive? Where do we hold that risk? So from a farming point of view, where will we ask our farmers to hold the risk of supply for fertiliser?

13:22Are we heading towards spring for some of the country? Do we hold extra super phosphate on the farm? Do we hold it regionally? Do the two producers hold it on behalf of the customs? Where is that risk held on the balance sheet? How are their boards thinking about it? And where is the sovereign risk of not having fertiliser for next spring? You know, I look at what's happening in the straits of the moves. It's not going to open this year. And if it opens next year, it will not flow at the rate that it did last year. So we've really got to think about imagining what petrol or diesel will be at $4 a liter. I think you predicted that Christmas and beyond somewhere in that region. Yeah, so I mean, I just filled up my steps on the other day. I think I had a car the other day and it was $150 to fill up a little Volkswagen Polo. $150. He doesn't have $150 to spare. So how do you make ends meet?

14:24And then I was speaking to a friend down at Merchus and Way who runs a big contracting business and struggling to get the fuel that he needs to run as contracting equipment. Now, we're going to see these impacts at the farm gate real quick, real soon. Because out there are dealing with decreased diesel thefts, increased even what do they call it now in the rustling these days. People standing stock just a black market economy to sell meat for God's sake. This is things that we shouldn't have happening in our rural community. Yes. And then where do you have that discussion? I do get frustrated when I go on to the MB website to try and get an understanding of where the reserves are fuel. They can't show the country where we're holding the risk. So they can tell you where a ship was three days ago. Well, that's not acceptable when you're shopping online. You need to know where it is today. So we should be saying to the primary industry, food, fiber, forestry, fishing. Here's where we're holding diesel reserves in Southland. Here's where we're holding it in Nelson for a particular fleet.

15:24And do we prioritize diesel to the forestry industry over the agricultural industry? I mean, we've got to take this national security risk stuff a lot more seriously than we have done. We're not in your opinion at the moment. We're just sitting back watching it happen. If you really want to see how stark it is, get online, have a look at the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. Go into the National Security Group and look at the National Risk Register. Our National Risk Register has 28 risks on it. The first risk that you'll see is earthquake. No New Zealander believes that an earthquake is a risk. It's a fact. It's an event. We will have and are having earthquakes as we speak. But having an earthquake, crush, you'd like, or the sub-alpine fault, or similar, or another white island, these things will occur. So it's not a... You don't mitigate to a certainty. What you've got to be able to do is what is the risk to our fuel storage during an earthquake? What is the risk to our ability to get goods to market during an earthquake?

16:26Big earthquake, all the bridges in Southland are blind out. Who owns that risk? Is it farmers in Southland? Is it a dairy cooperative? Is it the regional council? Is it the city council? Or is it the Prime Minister and Cabinet who needs to be thinking seriously about these things? So we need to have a better framework for a national risk, sovereign risk, and we need to integrate private sector into that discussion so much better than we are at the moment. Good point. When it comes to what's happening around the globe at the moment, and I mean, you called them at least crisis, I believe, this war and I run, given your background, I don't think you would see it as being much of a surprise. Not at all. So it... I remember talking to a couple of ministers of the Crown about this in March, and I did one of my earlier TV interviews. You can't call the strikes into terror into Iran a surprise. It was clearly indicated, well and truly, days in advance. And to then turn around and go, it was a shock. We haven't seen it coming.

17:29We don't have an energy strategy. So seven months into the war in the Middle East, we still don't have an energy strategy. We're talking about the price of fuel at the pump. We're not talking about how do we mitigate energy next winter? And what will happen here in Wellington is next week the government will rise. They go to caretaker mode. No one, none of the bureaucrats in Wellington will turn up to work before White Tungu Day. I mean, show me a farmer that takes a 12-week break and doesn't open a gate, move stock, check on the well-being of his shepherds and their families. I mean, we've got to get over this holiday mentality. I call it a holiday home of the Empire. We all want a good summer. We all want to catch some snapper, put some venous and backstage on the barbecue, but come on, let's be serious about it. Do you see the Middle East situation if we deal with that one first? How do you see that playing out if you could be second as to gazing to that educated crystal ball of yours?

18:32So I would say that the status quo will remain at play for the foreseeable future. By that, I mean the potential for a catastrophic and strategic misstep is still at play. And that means one of the golf states doing something that will trigger a disproportionate response. The US, Israeli and IRGC positions, their three red lines are far from converging. So until they do, you're not going to get a negotiated piece or a pathway to a negotiated piece. Instability through IRGC proxies at play as we see with the hoothies will continue as will his baller to a much lesser extent. A mass, which is obviously greatly degraded, but that doesn't mean that there aren't other actors at play across the Middle East. So the Saudi pipeline has been struck over the last few days. Oil tankers trying to transit have been struck and counterstructs have occurred.

19:35Trying to get oil flow or petroleum products back up to pre-crisis will not happen for years. Even if they are straights open and there is a free gateway, there is no engineering hardware pipes, valves, machinery. So we've got to get it from somewhere, form it, get it in, then we need the engineers to rebuild it and then to recertify. Which means all the war premiums for insurance will remain high for the next two to three years. All of that is a transferred cost to the rural community and a transferred cost to the urban dwellers. Because what we're not seeing and people are not wanting to think about as we get ready for this Christmas that's people are thirsting for is everything on your supermarket shelf and the toy warehouse shelf is wrapped in plastic. Plastic is a byproduct of a petroleum industry. Pharmaceuticals are wrapped in plastic bottles. All of that is going to have an impact. So we're going to have some serious economic concerns going forward.

20:37Again, my advice to people as I go forward is don't panic. Just be clear-eyed and now think about where are the opportunities. With every threat there is opportunity and this is for New Zealand to bring to the fore some good strategic thinking. And that probably starts with who's going to be the next government. My question to you though and I'm very skeptical about this is strategic thinkers in the halls of power. I don't see too many of them. Yeah, I don't know where are those people coming from. What are you up to? Yeah, that's a great question. It's used to be like people tell me go for a good run. Yeah, okay, you're obviously never run with a pack on your back for 20 kilometers. There's any number of really good articles around about public service leadership at the strategic level. And it's a challenge and it's a frustration especially when we read the with great disappointment. You know what's happening with projects that don't work and money that's being spent in and capabilities not delivered.

21:41I think there has been an erosion of our public servants culture and imagination. And we shouldn't be surprised because we disincentivise that. When I see chief executives on their second and third appointment as a chief executive who are clearly well crafted policy bureaucrats, not deep professionals of the organisation are leading in ministers who are what I call functionally dislocated from their command. So they're in the beehive, but the ministry, pick a ministry is a thousand metres away or further and their chief executive sits and splendid isolation on a great believer. And when you're in command, the troops need to see you and they need to understand what your requirements are. We have some amazing public servants and some real patriots that go to work in there, but I'm not sure that the most senior of them are as agile adaptive and as for the public. And maybe it's because they just haven't been incentivised or maybe it's because the public service commissioners process for selecting is not as for looking as it needs to be.

22:52Yeah, I'd add ability into that list that you rattled off there as well. And some instances to other theatres of global conflict, I was talking with one of my sons the other day, I mean like, yeah, everyone sort of kind of forgotten that there's also Russia and Ukraine, you mentioned it earlier in this chat. You know, that make grinder just continues with again, the end in sight here. And then this has been going on for what was that 2022? So we're probably heading into a 50 year of that conflict if my memory serves me correctly. Where's that going? Look, so once we hit the end of February, we'll be into the 50 year of a war in Eastern Europe. That's a World War II statistic. Yeah. And the death, we've become immune or divorced from it here in New Zealand and our splendid isolation. The amount of dead Ukrainians civilian and combatants and non combatants civilians military and Russian huge number of Russian soldiers have gone into that mech grinder on a scale that we haven't seen since 1945.

24:05There's a couple of really telling things. Mark Ruter is the current Secretary General of NATO. At the NATO conference in November last year, he had a really good quote, which was we, and they're talking about NATO, we must prepare for warfare on our scale that our grandparents experienced. That's why they're spending 5% of GDP now. This is a Dutch, very bright capable man who's saying on the scale our grandparents experienced. So Putin is not deterred, he's not dissuaded, he remains at large, he's doing things every day to disrupt Western Europe. Look at the drone strike at Lipseed, Litzkeg and the arson attacks and the poisons and assassinations across Western Europe testing the, what we call the boundaries of article five in NATO. All of these things have been ongoing and again, it's really hard to get that through here because I guess part of it is people don't want to face that reality because we all want to go to London on it.

25:09But our kids want to go and do the OE as we ordered, they don't want to know that you might be subject to a terrorist attack or a sabotage insider attack from a state actor. It's a different world. The plane really bothers me and not just the death of so many combatants but look at the stolen children. So the taken by force, not one, not two thousands and thousands of Ukrainian children, forcibly deported and given Russian citizenship and put into internment camps. We've ignored that. We as a country have chosen just to, okay, maybe you're a war criminal now, Mr Putin, but that's as far as we go. I've got a great friend who's in Ukraine as I speak, retired Colonel Timbipow from Tarronga. He did a really good podcast on the initiative last week, well with listening to what he's doing over there. He's over there helping remove civilian casualties from combat zones.

26:15It's well with seeing we've had several New Zealanders who've gone over there to fight in the Ukrainian forces and have died fighting there. Some are ex-service personnel who've left service and gone to fight. Others are straight civilian volunteers. Yeah, it's horrific and that we continue just to brush it off. It doesn't even make frontline news in New Zealand. Exactly, which was my point here. We were talking about it and like, oh yeah, what's happened to that one? But I mean, just the purely attritional side of it though. I mean, Russia's just got more numbers to more bodies to throw at this. Anyway, I can say it being resolved as if those certain territories that are up for question in Eastern Europe or on the Russia's West, I suppose. Effectively, the only way that things are going to be resolved there is those territories are seated to the Russians and I just can't see how it's going to be resolved any other way.

27:16Look, you're right. I put once the annexation of the Eastern provinces had probably won the whole half of Ukraine, if not all of Ukraine, which was his initial objective when he assaulted into directly into Kiev in the airfield in February 22. How is it fair, right and proper for the Ukrainians to give up so much land to mass? You know, they did this in 14 in the Crimea. So if we the West and free will, they're just going to say, well, you give it up and that'll stop it. It's not our problem. I mean, that's a horrific thing to do for any nation. Can you imagine what that would mean if we tried to annex YCATO Northland and Auckland and just said, right, this is what we'll let go. I mean, we would be up in arms as a nation. I understand, but to say, I mean, a concession is going to have to come somewhere. Otherwise, what do we do? Just keep throwing bodies in this for another five years. I mean, it's just crazy. But war, to war being a student of war and having gone to war college and studied these things. So what we call the nature and characteristics of war, the nature is why humans fight, humans fight for three reasons, whether it's in a neighborhood or in an interstate or global warfare, it's fear, honor and interest, fear, honor and interest.

28:36And when those issues are spiked, fear, honor and interest, then you fight to the death. How you fight the character of war, well, that's what we're seeing in Ukraine now, drone warfare on an unprecedented scale. Russia has got the ability to build industrial age at scale, explosive and deliberate real quick onto a civilian population. So this is nature and characteristic of war. How long can the Ukrainians put up with it? They'll put up with it for nearly five years. How long will they? Well, they've got a constitutional issue with the they can't have an election. So they need to change the constitution or something happens with Zelensky. Western Europe, like three big nations are sticking with Ukraine. So we might see the status quo there for a very long time as we have on the Korean peninsula with the 1953 armistice. So again, fear, honor and interest and how do we drive it? Boy, boy, what a world, what a world we live in. Mind you in saying that, you know, there's been a couple of stories.

29:42I'll get your sort of take on it and I take no sides in any of these things, but the pager thing in the Iran theater or with his below, I should say. And also that drone attack by the Ukrainians deep inside Russia with the with the crates and, you know, this sort of self mobilizing drones. I mean, these two things here, we're seeing innovation and warfare now that I don't know you tell me was the last time we saw innovation like this. Western front, the development of the heavy machine gun. There you go. So when we went from manually operated individual rifleman to sustained fire machine guns heavy machine guns, eight millimeter and 30 and 50 caliber. So over 100 years ago. Yeah. So that, I mean, that was the machine gun was transformational in the Western front. But it took the Allies 18 months to get the head around it and how to advance across and the New Zealand division was part of that.

30:43Electronic warfare in the 70s and 60s, smart technologies and satellites. What we're seeing now, though, of course, are two really important things. One is Moore's law for computing and technology. Now Moore's law is a 60 year old theory. That says technology like that accelerates and doubles every six months. But what is accelerated it and what I call pouring petrol on that theory is artificial intelligence. So now with AI, Moore's law is accelerated. And of course in Ukraine, when they're fighting for their lives, they're not bound by what we have in New Zealand, which is an acquisition system that takes decades to deliver something. You know, if they need it, they build it. If it doesn't work, then they rebuild it. There's no bureaucrat saying, well, you've got to have an open source tender for that drone and you've got to go to market and you've got to get 12 people and one of them has got to come from this province and three of them have got to think slightly different to you and deliver it over a 12 month period.

31:44Necessity drives imagination and in Ukraine, that technology, we've got companies in New Zealand, and science, it drone technology company selling combat proven platforms that are being used in Ukraine today. They're just not selling them to New Zealand, because we're not in magic on enough to buy them. It's an interesting point though, isn't it, in terms of the whole tech thing, and we look at it, we see it on our farms all the time now, and that growth is exponential as well. The flow of military tech into commercial ag, I mean, yeah, can we get some of our, you go get our hands on some of these things. I mean, it seems to me the applications outside of the theater of war could be quite beneficial. Exactly, and I know there are already farms and farmers using low cost smaller drones for treatment of fertilizer, spray cropping, weeding, and then the untitled, what do we call them now where there's no fences and it's all electronically controlled and the fences disappear.

32:49We imagine farms without physical fences and reducing your cost of hard work and maintenance, because we all know how much hard work it is to maintain fences. All of that stuff, that dual use technology should be on the farm. Again, I'd keep coming back to the minister for agriculture, needs to be talking to the minister of defense and putting clear demands on technology with dual use. It shouldn't be for farmers to have to go and hunt for these things, we make this stuff in New Zealand, and it's dual use, and the average key we will look straight away, it's like when you get a, those little robots and helicopters, you know, they were built for commuter transport in California, and look what we do with them in New Zealand, far beyond the specs. So let's have a really good think about dual use tech. Yeah, I think so, I think that's a missing opportunity, there are missed opportunity in some regards at least anyway. So our policy in relation to all of this, where we sit on the international stage, we have a barbeque way pretty much, don't we, with most sort of conflicts and stuff around the world,

33:54because I mean, we send our goods into multiple markets all around the world, you know, meet goes into well over a hundred countries as one example. Do we need to take more of a draw more of a line in the sand on some of these things or as our sort of diplomatic stance, if you like, acceptable at the moment. I work with the number in the primary industry at the executive level, I don't think we have to tell chief executives that they need to diversify their market wherever possible. It would be good if our diplomats, and we've got some spectacular diplomats that I've worked with over the years, but we could afford to be a bit more imaginative with our trade delegations, putting the PM on a plane with a whole lot of chief executives flying in somewhere. Probably lacks the diversity that we need in many respects. I do laugh having with our big dairy provider having a casual conversation, great, that dairy is a foundational part of our economy, but imagine for a moment if whilst it is still big, that it became second or third.

35:05And what political weight that it may no longer have if mining, for example, became ten times the size of dairy, or if forestry not logs but finished product full value chain add became more profitable than dairy. I know that's hearsay if I walked into certain sectors of the community, but when we've got rare earth and precious metals, look at the price of gold today and think about how our debt would change. Or if we actually looked at Norway as an example on how they transform their economy when they found oil in the North Sea. What we've got in the southern ocean, what we've got closer to home, or dare I say it even in Antarctica, but I'm not allowed to say that publicly because everyone will see, how do you think about that? So I think the times come for us to take the restrictions off our thinking in relation to market diversification, to how we engage and how we build the resilience.

36:10And it's that old saying, don't put all our eggs in one basket. I mean our primary produce is good. The fact that here we are at the bottom of the world and we can get high quality lamb to market at a lower cost than someone in Europe. I mean that that's unbelievable. I mean, so let's think about what good might look like going forward. There's no harm in having our primary industry is being one of a number of high performing industries as it were. I totally agree because at the moment it is basically primary industries and then to me I guess tourism and that's kind of what we've got. What's next? Yeah, so I think the technology gap is there. I think part of the challenge for me is that our industrial age stove piped architecture of Wellington. So we go to the Ministry of Agriculture and it's a pipe. So where do I bring in drone technology to the Ministry of Agriculture other than a commercial pride provide has to ran themselves in or some farmer with enough political heft can go I want this.

37:12That those vertical barriers need to be eroded and opened and we need a flat a flat command control system that allows tech to come and go and then wealth to expand. So if the wealth is going to be the aquaculture industry because that's a that's has huge potential. So let's think about how we champion that and it's not at the risk of changing forestry or mainstream fishing or the fiber industry because walls picking up again or I mean can we pivot fast enough to take advantage of the increased beef price in America today. So we're currently using a really a cap way of growing beef in my mind you know when I was a young kid helping my uncle on the farm you know we're still intergenerational thinking around how do we get the best weight at the kill how do we hold it where do we hold it. There's some really good open source intelligence that we should be using to better predict and better grow and then better hold to get higher weights better product and get it to we were and I know there'll be farmers out there going what what is a old soldier know about farming well I'm not saying I'm a farmer what I'm saying is the technology and that data will allow you to think differently about on farm production and have a deeper discussion with the cooperatives and the support.

38:37So it's a lot of players about to market to the kill house and holding right so it's it's an expansion of thought of thinking outside the traditional parameters that's all you're saying. Yeah and you know in the industry of ag in first it they need to be totally integrated not stovepipes with oh you can't bring me a good idea and you need to go and talk to this person like come on let's be the imaginative keyweeds that we were in the 40s 50s and 60s you know when he's. You know Mr Hamilton said I'm going to drive up this river and they go you can't drive up there well I'm going to make a new motor. I mean let's let's use the technology let's put a thermal camera on a drone with voice activated software that allows you to master a high country station without having a human or a dog on the hill and let's validate it using a synthetic aperture radar radar to actually see if there's any you know heat signatures voice signatures still in the boat. I mean we should be using that for search and rescue for God's sakes.

39:39So becoming less risk averse might be a good thing back to because we talk about number at one mentality but we don't it's not as apparent as it once was a seems a bit of an old cliche now doesn't it really well it does I think the reason we're so good at number eight is that's all we had with the pair of pliers and a bit of muscle. We can use a 3d printer now to create something that might we might have done when we repurposed a gate hinge or we took a piece of wire to make something that was good enough. I appreciate all your thoughts on these topics from your standpoint as well because it's you know as I said with your sort of rap sheet at the start of the program john it's quite expensive extensive you've. You've done a lot over the last 40 years I have to ask you though what was it like working for the US defense intelligence agency not a very common thing for a new zelander. I'm the only key we that's had the role I there are some things will never see the light of day I was privileged to serve with some amazing patriotic Americans at the beating heart of the US intelligence community at the executive level I was the only non American at the executive level across the 18 agencies.

40:53It's big I mean our operating budget was in the billions our workforce was bigger than our police and defense force combined and that's the unclassified figures we did operations globally in over 150 countries every day and I'd work that sent calm before as well. It was an absolute privilege as the only way I can describe it and when you go there so I went to war college and other places you know you step off the bus and you judge yourself how will I stand on the stage well you're a key we you get taught to think independently and speak truth to power and the people that I worked with were very much truth to power and every day we did things to improve the world for the power of the world. For the population of the world but that perhaps people don't like that narrative sometimes they watch the movies and think there's all these. Plans of foot and conspiracies ongoing and you know the world is a complex place but you know the privilege to sit at the deep end of the swimming pool for a while and I yeah it was an experience that I one of the highlights of my career without a doubt.

42:10Now between the right of reports and think tanks and the like you still enjoy getting out to the hinterland and clearing the mind is it work John yeah well look why uncles are sitting on the hoketika river today which is where I should be. That's white bait season and you never ask a west coast how much white bait they've caught the answer as I got a feed and that's it. Looking forward to a bit of summer venison and maybe a trout or two at the lake down south yeah it's definitely the beauty of New Zealand after all of my operational tours and exposure to the world is. You know we live in a very privileged location coming home. Stuart Island is another place I've got a uncle that lives down there that I really treasure and being with him and being down on the island because it's such a great little spot. There's something quite deeply personal about just getting back in the bush and breathing you know what I used to say when people asked the more I see of the world the less I want to see.

43:14It's about coming home and enjoying having quite beer and just just fading away into the background in the working Vince club and hoketika no one catches me there that's where I'll be. I really enjoyed talking with you thank you very much I do appreciate it I hope you get to talk again at some stage but until then enjoy the year enjoy the fishing. Right thanks to cheers mate see you real exchange with net speed outstanding in their field.