A screenshot from a Cubic Corporation video promoting its weapons training systems. Photo: Youtube / Cubic Corporation
A peace group is asking the government to cancel the contract with a US ticketing company that has arms industry and surveillance subsidiaries.
Cubic Corporation has won a $1.4billion Waka Kotahi contract to build and run a national ticketing system for 15 years.
Its weapons wing helps build military drones and it has [. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/477400/us-firm-contracted-for-national-transport-ticketing-system-involved-in-weapons-manufacturing another arm linked to US intelligence agencies]; its transport contracting spans the world, and NZTA said it chose Cubic based on this track record.
However, Peace Action Wellington said the government spending tax dollars on a company like this was "obscene".
It had written to the Transport Minister Michael Wood asking for urgent action to cancel the deal, group member Valerie Morse said.
It needed "to institute some ethical investment parameters for government contracts," she said.
"It does not make sense to talk about addressing violent extremism and the growth of militarism on one hand, as the government has done just this year, and on the other hand, sign state contracts with companies that are actively engaged in those things."
Online links to a Cubic promotional video on Youtube that showed aerial systems - whether of planes or drones is not clear - targeting men with weapons dressed in robes, no longer works, since RNZ ran the story.
The transport minister has been approached for comment.