That isn't cast in stone. At present it is politically convenient for the centre right and right wing parties to keep it current.
Under what law will you be able to extend national law beyond the 12 mile limit? There is no international law which gives us that right.
That's rubbish. It was the dial a mob. Jane Kelsey who hates any trade deal, the Labour Party, and left wing activists who ranted and raved against it because it was John Key's (then PM) deal and America was involved. It was the same with the flag referendum; because john Key sponsored it, all the left wing activists heavily politicised because they hated him and vilified him.
No probs. My pleasure. I agree in that a grim era is ahead for NZDF procurement. The current National Party seems to have stuck its head in the sand as well and that's not a good sign. I would not be surprised to see the Seasprite replacement slid back to 2030 and we all know that they won't last that long. It's be back to the 2009 - 2012 situation with the five SH-2G(NZ) Seasprites.
The PRC population pyramid in
@KiwiRob post above, shows an interesting distribution difference between males and females from the age 40 - 44 cohorts and below. There is a notice growth in the number of males to females and that is creating social problems with an increasing number of males unable to find female partners. The second point to note, is at the same point the pyramid starts to narrow with a slight bulge between the five to twenty year old groups. We also know that the PRC economy isn't doing as well as it should, even taking into account the COVID-19 pandemic, because of Xi Jinping's factional fighting with the Jiang Zemin faction. This is causing business collapses and uncertainty, resulting in foreign companies pulling out of the PRC and rising unemployment. So there's not enough money to go around and discretional spending has dropped. Many who have lost their jobs are the ones who would have bought NZ products. It doesn't help that Xi is also turning the country towards an inward looking repressive Maoist state, so we may not see the Chinese tourists and students here in large numbers like we used too. Increasing unemployment, the low numbers of young people in a culture that expects the young to look after the elderly in their dotage, a declining birth rate, an economy that's undergoing shock therapy, and an increased restriction on people within the PRC is creating tensions and pressure the the CCP may have problems dealing with.
This all means that our region becomes less stable than it already is and we aren't prepared at all. We will at some stage loose access to the PRC markets for one reason or the other, and it might be sooner rather than later. Look how quickly the balloon went up in the Ukraine. And that's another point. What if Putin decides to kick off WW3 with a demonstration of how big his old fella is by detonating a small nuke somewhere? That's WW3 probably on steroids. and what have we got? A bunch of perished shanghaies and stones of doubtful quality because of a series of leadership who were and are blinded by all that glitters, much like the dwarven folk of old when they saw gold.