NZ Army continually looking at improving training safety: Chief of Army

It has been more than six and a half years since Ngāti Tūmatauenga, the New Zealand Army, lost Lance Corporal Nik Kahotea. 

His loss, like those of all our fallen comrades, is carried by family, whānau, friends, colleagues and comrades. And while time may pass, the pain, grief and shock is harder to shake. For some, I acknowledge that pain may never truly go away. 

I would like to share my gratitude and thanks to all of those who have contributed to this week’s hearing for the coronial inquest. It’s not easy to revisit such a traumatic event. 

We now look ahead to supporting the Coroner with the remainder of her inquest.

Lance Corporal Kahotea led a life of service to the New Zealand Army, and his country. He was an NZSAS Operator at the peak of his career. He was an outstanding soldier whose record of operational service in Afghanistan rightly earned him significant and deserved recognition.

He was a shining example of what Ngāti Tūmatauenga stands for. But above all, he was a father, brother, son, partner, and friend to many. 

As a member of the NZSAS, he was trained, ready and willing to serve New Zealand’s interests in the most complex and difficult environments.

Lance Corporal Kahotea died during a counter-terrorism training exercise. He was training to keep New Zealand safe. The helicopter he was in moved away from the building he and his team were disembarking onto. This movement created a gap that, tragically, Lance Corporal Kahotea fell through, sustaining unsurvivable injuries.

The training required to operate at these elite levels is inherently dangerous. These exercises carry a higher level of risk than routine exercises, to best prepare our people to not only achieve mission success, but also to best protect our people when they are deployed. 

The New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) puts significant effort into mitigating the risk of deaths or serious injury on any exercise. However, in military training, it will never be possible to eliminate all risks. 

In relation to the exercise being conducted when Lance Corporal Kahotea died, the NZDF’s Court of Inquiry and Assembling Authority findings identified there were deficiencies by the NZDF in the planning and authorising of the bump insertion training. These were acknowledged in 2022 and we regret these omissions.  

A number of recommendations were made by the Court of Inquiry and these have all been actioned.

As has been reported, and publicly released through the Official Information Act, around the same time as this Court of Inquiry, other reviews identified deficiencies in the Army’s training system. These reviews were the most concentrated and wide-ranging effort to improve our safety and training processes in recent times.

The NZDF has a responsibility to identify and fix deficiencies in its training and to continually improve its training across its multiple component parts, locations, training types and levels. We have, and continue to acknowledge, there were gaps and areas for improvement in the overall safety and training system.

We operate in an evolving strategic landscape, where the consequences of military operations, combined with rapidly evolving capabilities and operating environments, demand continual scrutiny and improvement. We are committed to continual improvement of our systems, to respond to emerging strategic challenges.

Since these reviews, we have stood up entirely new, centralised safety and training functions within the Army. We have refocused internal assurance functions to look more broadly across our training system. We look to continually improve training policy, doctrine, risk management processes, and our understanding of risk at all levels.

We strongly refute any characterisation in the media that the entire system is fundamentally defective or unfit. We are also confident that with the steps already undertaken, along with our continuous efforts to improve our systems, so far as reasonably practicable in a military setting it is fit to safely train our people to operate in the increasingly agile and evolving strategic environment demanded of them.