US “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth called New Zealand freeloaders for not spending 3.5% of GDP on defence. But how much defence do we really need, Henry Oliver asks in today’s excerpt from The Bulletin.

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It’s not often that a question from a single journalist makes headlines in every major news outlet in the country. But that’s what happened this weekend, when Anna Fifield – former Washington Post editor and correspondent, former editor of The Post, now a freelancer, Substacker, and writer of The Spinoff’s World Bulletin – put a direct question to US secretary of defense Pete Hegseth at Asia-Pacific’s biggest security conference, and he gave an answer that quickly bounced back to New Zealand and then around the world.

The question 

Hegseth was in Singapore for the Shangri-La Dialogue, as was New Zealand defence minister Chris Penk. In his address, Hegseth called on nations to reach defence spending of 3.5% of GDP, framing it as the new “global norm”, and praised a string of Asian countries stepping up — South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Australia. New Zealand was conspicuously absent from his list. Fifield, who was in the room, joined the queue and asked him directly: does that mean New Zealand, with its plan to move from 1% to 2% of GDP over eight years, is a free rider?

Hegseth’s answer, first published on Fifield’s Between Giants newsletter, was blunt: “2 percent is not enough, and so 2 percent is freeloading.” He added that he had nothing against New Zealand, but warned: “You better have the same capabilities that we do, because if we don’t, our alliance is meaningless.”

How much defence do we need (or want)?

Quoted in the NZ Herald, former defence minister Wayne Mapp pushed back on the framing. Mapp, who led the defence ministry from 2008 to 2011, argued that New Zealand’s unique geopolitical circumstances “should negate the need” to spend at the level Hegseth demands, pointing out that the Pacific faces no threat of invasion comparable to Ukraine, and that the country’s geographical isolation – while costly in many respects – provides a significant security buffer that NATO members don’t have.

It was also curious timing to spotlight New Zealand’s defence spending. Earlier in the week, at the Aotearoa Music Awards (reported for The Spinoff by Alex Casey), in an impassioned seven-minute speech by Dame Lynda Topp, delivered less than a week after her twin sister Jools passed away from cancer, she questioned the government’s increased defence spending, outlined in the budget released earlier that day. “We need support for artists in this country. We need a government that says the arts is more important than a defence budget,” she said, referencing the $27 million cut to the Ministry of Arts, Culture and Heritage and the $1.6 billion boost to defence. “What the fuck?”

The domestic (nuclear) fallout

Reporting in Stuff also noted that the government’s increased defence spending in the budget, including funding for military drones, critical ship maintenance, and naval upgrades – the first steps of a plan to lift spending to 2% of GDP. Penk, who had been sitting in the front row as Hegseth spoke, pushed back diplomatically, saying New Zealand was not a freeloader and that the trajectory mattered.

The more surprising development came when he was asked, at the forum, about Australia’s forthcoming AUKUS nuclear-propelled submarines. According to 1News, Penk said it would be “helpful” to have a conversation about New Zealand’s nuclear-free policy, suggesting there might be a meaningful distinction between nuclear weapons and nuclear propulsion – a comment that political commentator Robert Patman warned could alarm Pacific Island and Southeast Asian nations.

The prime minister’s office moved quickly to confirm the nuclear-free policy would not change, while pointedly declining to say whether the Prime Minister agreed with Penk’s remarks. Labour leader Chris Hipkins was more direct: New Zealanders were, he said, rightly proud of the stance, and it should stay.

One question from a New Zealand freelancer in a Singaporean ballroom, and suddenly we’re relitigating our nuclear-free identity and its place in a rapidly reshaping global security order.