Exercise tests how Aotearoa can build resilience together

The exercise was held at Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa Massey University’s Pukeahu Wellington campus earlier this week and was hosted by the Centre for Defence and Security Studies and School of People, Environment and Planning.

Created and directed by Jan Eldeblad, Sweden’s Defence Attaché to Canberra and Wellington, the exercise provided hands-on engagement with Sweden’s internationally recognised ‘Total Defence’ model, which builds resilience across government, industry and communities.

Participants included representatives from Police, the New Zealand Defence Force, local iwi, technology companies, ports, local and regional government, cyber security, emergency management and non-governmental organisations.

Working in small groups before coming together into larger teams, participants were presented with a series of increasingly challenging scenarios involving biosecurity, criminal activity, cyber threats, disinformation, destabilisation and sabotage, testing whole-of-society decision-making under pressure.

The aim was not to find a solution to any one scenario, but to explore how different organisations and sectors would work together when multiple challenges emerged at the same time.

Head of the School of People, Environment and Planning Professor Bethan Greener says the diversity of participants was one of the exercise’s greatest strengths.

The scenarios were deliberately uncomfortable, with each new challenge adding pressure to the decisions participants were making.

But the scenarios themselves were less important than what they revealed about the way organisations communicate, collaborate and respond.

The exercise highlighted the importance of identifying gaps and vulnerabilities before a crisis occurs, then developing the practices, systems and relationships needed to respond effectively.

This approach is often described as whole-of-society security or whole-of-society resilience, recognising that national resilience cannot sit with a single agency or sector.

For Aotearoa NZ, that means considering how government, industry, communities, iwi, emergency services, academia and other organisations can work together when faced with increasingly complex and interconnected challenges.

The exercise forms part of Massey’s broader contribution to conversations about defence, security and resilience.

Professor Greener says the exercise represents the beginning of a wider conversation about how Aotearoa NZ prepares for the future.

“The event represented the start of a new conversation, one that Massey will look to help carry forward in the coming years.”