WELLINGTON - The Government will not give priority to any request from the Defence Force for $445 million to upgrade the six Orion aircraft, Helen Clark said yesterday.
The lobby group Just Defence released documents showing the money is wanted for new electronics for the maritime surveillance aircraft.
Spokesman Kevin Hackwell said the documents were parts of confidential briefing papers sent to Defence Minister Mark Burton on March 9.
But Helen Clark said she had not seen the documents and there had been no cabinet paper of any kind on the issue.
"The cabinet will not be considering it this month because we will not be considering any major purchase outside the publication of a clear framework of Government priorities," she said at her post-cabinet press conference.
"In the generally agreed prioritisation of defence purchasing, the Army comes at the top, the airlift and maritime lift capacity tends to come second, issues of surveillance, maritime and air come third, and the air combat issue has been down at the bottom.
"You could expect us to be ordering priorities roughly in line with that."
Earlier, Mr Hackwell said the new Orion equipment was a leftover from the previous Government's defence policies. The $445 million was the final offer from US arms manufacturer Raytheon, which would expire this month.
He said the Defence Force claimed the upgrade was needed for fisheries protection and search and rescue, but the high-tech equipment was not designed for those jobs.
A spokesman for Mr Burton said the proposal had been approved in principle by the previous Government in 1998 and so it was under consideration, as was everything else previously approved.
He said Mr Burton was working on the Government's formal statement on defence policy, based on the Defence Beyond 2000 report, which would go to the cabinet for approval by the end of this month.
- NZPA
