Thank you to all the new supporters and for Tweeting parliament.

Please share this petition with you friends and family

One of the challenges with running a petition like this one is overcoming the general lack of knowledge of the issue the petition is trying to address. Most New Zealanders are not even aware New Zealand has any surplus armoured vehicles, let alone the fact that New Zealand sold 22 of them to Chile.

The issue of New Zealand having surplus armoured vehicles it could donate to Ukraine has not been widely covered in the New Zealand media. James Hollings wrote an excellent article in Stuff about the issue several months ago, although events have moved on a bit since this article was written. This article was actually the inspiration for this petition.

RadioNZ has also interviewed the former Minister of Defence, Ron Mark and he has talked about it, but by and large there has been very little coverage and the mainstream media did not pick up the story about the 22 NZLAVs being sold to Chile at all. This was covered on military websites. I would have thought the fact that New Zealand was sitting on 30 to 40 surplus armoured vehicles that Ukraine desperately could make use of and we sold 22 of them 2 months after the war in Ukraine started would be a major thing to report on.

The media has also in some cases been quite misleading about what military aid New Zealand could offer Ukraine, essentially implying that New Zealand doesn't have any to offer, which isn't true, and anyone who has taken the time to study New Zealand's military inventory knows this isn't true.

There has also been no media coverage of this petition despite several attempts on my part to get it covered.

What this means is that we need to do all the work of spreading the knowledge both about the issue the petition is addressing and the petition itself. Fortunately, Social Media is a very powerful tool for spreading awareness. I encourage you all to spread this petition on Social Media. It also doesn't hurt to share the petition more than once as not everyone will see the post the first time round. When sharing the petition on Facebook you can share it with your friends or you can share it to one of the many Facebook groups that are dedicated to supporting Ukraine (in the Facebook share page it has a dropdown at the top that allows you to chose who you share it with). There are also some common hashtags. This petition uses the hashtag #NZLAVForUkraine. Common hashtags are #ArmUkraineNow and #StandWithUkraine. You will find these hashtags on both Facebook and Twitter. And you can share it on one of the many other platforms if you prefer.

Thank you,

Finn