March 2023

he New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) launched Operation Respect in 2016 in response to three separate reviews that had identified harmful sexual behaviour in the armed forces.1 Operation Respect aimed to prevent harmful behaviour from occurring and ensure that, when it did happen, there were systems and processes to deal with it properly.

The Office of the Auditor-General has committed to assessing how well NZDF is progressing towards achieving Operation Respect’s aims of eliminating harmful behaviour and creating a safe, respectful, and inclusive environment for all NZDF personnel.

Our work has two main components. We will perform regular performance audits to determine how effectively NZDF is implementing Operation Respect. Our first performance audit focuses on how well NZDF has reset Operation Respect and whether it has been designed and set up effectively to achieve its aims. We present our audit findings in a separate report.2

We will also carry out regular monitoring to assess the impact of the actions NZDF takes and, over time, whether they are achieving positive outcomes. This report sets out our initial findings from that monitoring. It is the first report in what will be a series and establishes a baseline for measuring NZDF’s progress. (From the Executive summary). Follow the links to also see the audit report, published March 2023 (#8245). Record #8246