Daily Inspiration Quote by Jenny Shipley

“Very significant” is the kind of political phrasing that tells you as much by what it refuses to name as by what it claims to celebrate. Jenny Shipley’s line operates as a pressure-release valve: it signals resolve without pinning itself to a single controversial choice. That’s not accidental. Defence policy, especially for a small country with outsized alliances, lives in the realm of trade-offs voters rarely want itemized. The vagueness is the message: trust the adults, don’t ask for the shopping list.

The timeframe matters. “In the last two years” narrows the claim to an administrable window, implying momentum and competence, a government in motion rather than in theory. It also implicitly brackets the past: whatever New Zealand used to do about defence, that era is over. The grammar is carefully nationalistic but not chest-thumping. “New Zealand’s taken” assigns agency to the country rather than the cabinet, laundering partisan choice into national consensus.

Shipley, as a head of government in the late 1990s, was speaking into a regional security environment that was tightening: post-Cold War optimism fading, Asia-Pacific uncertainties rising, and the perennial question of how much a distant, comparatively safe democracy should spend to stay credible with partners. The line is built to reassure multiple audiences at once: allies hear “we’re stepping up,” domestic skeptics hear “we’re being prudent,” and critics are left with little to grab onto. It’s managerial rhetoric with a strategic purpose: normalize defence shifts by describing them as simply “decisions,” already made, already “significant,” already the nation’s.