United New Zealand Party leader, Hon Peter Dunne, is calling on the Coalition Government to extend the Quigley review of the F-16 contract to a full defence summit.

"The review should provide an opportunity to look ahead in terms of what New Zealand's future defence capabilities are in all areas, and how they could best be met.

"United New Zealand believes it is high time that a multi-party defence summit is established to determine all future defence capital expenditure requirements."

"Such a summit should aim to develop a multi-party accord, which would ultimately provide more certainty for the defence forces, by ensuring capital requirements are consistent with the military and personnel objectives of the forces and the government's defence priorities."

"For too long successive government defence policy and in particular capital requirements have emphasised ad-hockery at the expense of strategic planning for defence and capital equipment funding, despite there being significant agreement over many defence issues, for example New Zealand's present role as contributors to the peacekeeping forces in East Timor."

"A Defence Summit bringing all the political parties represented in Parliament and the relevant stakeholders together would be a constructive and positive measure to provide long-term agreement on the future capital and purchasing requirements for the sector."

"The present Quigley review is a useful start, but to be truly effective and achieve genuine long-term political buy-in, it must be the forerunner of a wider multiparty defence expenditure accord, otherwise our defence forces will remain perennially underfunded, with any defence spending priority becoming bogged in petty politics as we have seen over recent years," Mr Dunne concludes.

ENDS