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From the Australian Broadcasting Corporation:
New Zealanders want Air Force to be re-installedThe World Today - Monday, October 21, 2002 12:22
ELEANOR HALL: In New Zealand the Bali atrocity has led many people to question if their country is adequately prepared for a terrorist attack. There was great embarrassment amongst New Zealanders last week after Australia airlifted all New Zealand's injured from Bali and that a New Zealand Hercules, sent to assist with the medical evacuation, broke down in Darwin.
Anger and concern has poured out in letters to newspapers throughout the country, many of them calling for the Government to increase defence spending and bring back the combat wing of the Air Force, which it scrapped three years ago.
[snip]
GILLIAN BRADFORD: [New Zealand Prime Minister] Helen Clark has been in Egypt since the end of last week, commemorating the battle of El Alamein. She has maintained since events in Bali, that New Zealand is still an incredibly benign strategic environment, and that there is no threat of State to State conflict, and hence no reason for reinstating the strike wing of the Air Force.
[snip]
DAVID DICKENS: New Zealand is probably the only place in the world where terrorists could hijack a small airliner, for instance if they wanted to, kill all the passengers, load it up with extra munitions and bombs and what have you, things that explode, and fly it into a particular target. Simply because we have no airspace control at all, they could actually take as long as they liked.
GILLIAN BRADFORD: Rebuilding an Air Force would be an exceptionally difficult task, given there's no political will. Most of the Air Force's pilots have left the country, and the planes have been sold off.