Mark Keenan
- Money Matters
By Mark Keenan, Chief Financial Officer (Air)
You’d have to be living in a hole in the ground to not have picked up that New Zealand, and the world in general, is going through some tough economic times.
People are losing their jobs, big companies failing, and governments are pouring trillions of dollars into trying to keep their economies afloat. Here in New Zealand, although we are a little better placed than much of the world, the impacts remain severe. The government is predicting it will spend more than it earns for at least the next decade, and that its debt will double in the next three years and continue to grow fast for the foreseeable future.
So what does that mean for us in the RNZAF? We’ve got our own challenges: introducing a whole bunch of new aircraft into service while still maintaining a high level of activity in today’s operations – all of which of course costs money. What it means is that we all need to take both individual and collective responsibility for doing our part in helping New Zealand weather the economic storm. We have a lot of smart, passionate and highly professional people in this Air Force, a proud tradition of service to the country, and a real “can do” attitude which comes out particularly on operations or whenever the going gets tough.
Well, on the money front, it is getting tough, and won’t let up any time soon. If we can apply some of that “can do” attitude to doing things smarter and better, with a focus on making sure we spend those taxpayer dollars as efficiently as we can, I reckon we can make a real difference.
We need to take individual and collective responsibility for financial management of the RNZAF. Sure, the folk at the top need to do their job, and programmes like the Defence Transformation Programme and Review 09 will be key to our future success. But everyone needs to do their bit from the small stuff like switching off lights and double siding the photocopying, through to making sure we operate our aircraft fleets efficiently, ensuring we’ve got the right numbers of people working on the right stuff, that we’re getting the best deals in major contracts and so on. You are the best person to figure out what your contribution can be.
So think about that taxpayer dollar you’re spending. Remember you are a taxpayer too, so its your money you’re spending. Come up with the good ideas, and either just do it, or if you can’t, pass it on to someone who can – a supervisor, CO, base financial advisor, or through the innovation scheme.
I put this challenge to the senior leaders of the organisation recently when trying to work out how we make ends meet for the 2009/10 financial year, and in a very short space of time when they applied their minds to it, the ideas started flowing. We may not be able to do all of them, but we’ll have a crack.
If we can get even just a few really good ideas, we will be much better placed as we head into a challenging future.