Below is a statement by the Minister for Defence Richard Marles on the sale of Defence assets.
Today, the Albanese Government is announcing the most significant reform to Australia’s Defence estate in our nation’s history. For any organisation, its home, its land, its infrastructure, its bricks and mortar are fundamental to what it can do. And that is most certainly the case when it comes to Defence.
How far our planes can fly, how well we can train our troops, the capability of our maritime deployments — in so many ways — is defined by the quality of our bases. Now, as we face the most complex strategic circumstances since the end of the Second World War, what became manifest from the Defence Strategic Review, which was undertaken in 2022 and 2023, was a need to invest in our bases in the north and in the west: HMAS Stirling in Rockingham, and that string of bases from Cocos Island through Learmonth in Exmouth, through Curtin in Derby, Tindal in Katherine, Darwin, and Scherger in Weipa. And we’ve been doing that. We now have exquisite berthing capacities at HMAS Coonawarra in Darwin, which last year, for the first time, saw a UK aircraft carrier come alongside.
We’ve got much more fuel capacity at RAAF Base Tindal, for example, and we’re engaging in an $8 billion redevelopment of HMAS Stirling ahead of the Submarine Rotational Force – West. And that work is being undertaken right now. But at the same time, what became clear was that Defence, as one of the largest owners of property in the country, had a very significant estate, much of which was not being used.
Now, in truth, the issues around the Defence estate have been well known within Defence circles for a very long time. And it was with this in mind that the Government commissioned Jan Mason, a former Deputy Secretary in the Department of Finance and a former Managing Director of Defence Housing Australia, and Jim Miller, a former Chair of Infrastructure Victoria, to undertake an audit of the Defence estate. They’re both here today, and you’ll be able to ask questions of them. But let me just say up front how grateful we are for their work. It was thorough, it was exhaustive, but in so many ways it was also damning. And I do want to take you to some of what the report says. On page 33 — and I’m quoting — it says: “Defence is constrained by the weight of its past when it comes to management of the estate.
Today’s estate footprint comprises numerous legacy sites without a clear ongoing link to current or future capabilities. Urgent interventions are needed to correct the unsustainable trajectory that has resulted from decades of deferred decisions on contentious estate issues.” On page 35: “Defence is holding more property than it needs and is carrying the burden of past indecision to reorient the estate towards more contemporary and future needs.” Page 35 again: “Attempts to consolidate and rationalise property holdings in the past have been stymied by a lack of political and organisational will to overcome challenges.” And page 13: “It is clear that maintaining the status quo is not an option.” And so today, we are making those decisions. Today, we are taking the necessary action.
I really want to acknowledge Peter Khalil, Assistant Minister for Defence, who has done so much work on this since the election and who has really led the Government’s work in relation to the response to the Defence Estate Audit. And let me also acknowledge Matt Thistlethwaite, who did an enormous amount of work in this capacity as well before the election. But today, we are announcing that we are agreeing — or agreeing in principle — to every one of the 20 recommendations which are made by the Defence Estate Audit.
That includes Recommendation One, which at its heart recommends the divestiture of 68 properties. Now, of those 68, the Government is deciding to retain one, to partially retain three others, but to completely divest another 64 properties. And, in fact, three of those have already been divested. But to properly understand this, we need to have a sense of the dollars which are involved in this. Over the last four years, we have spent $4 million maintaining Spectacle Island in Sydney Harbour, which does not have a single Defence Force personnel on it. In the last six years, we’ve spent a million dollars dealing with vandalism and theft in respect of the Penrith Training Depot — a property that was vacated in 2016.
And indeed, the estate audit estimates that if we do nothing, we will be spending $2 billion over the next 25 years in respect of such properties, without a single contribution to defence capability. And that is clearly unsustainable. And yet, on the flip side, the divestiture of these properties represents the opportunity to return billions of dollars to the Government’s purse. Now, the mechanism by which we will be pursuing this divestiture is, over the next couple of years, transferring these properties to the Department of Finance. And from there, the Department of Finance, as the Government’s asset management specialist, will be responsible for the divestiture of the properties.
Some of them will happen quickly, but some of them will take years in order to properly divest, and the Finance Minister will be able to speak to that. But this mechanism allows Defence to realise the benefits of this divestiture in a timely way, while also giving the Commonwealth the space it needs to maximise the return from these properties. Now, some of these properties are very significant in terms of their heritage value to Australia. I particularly refer to Victoria Barracks Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. In many ways, the Australian Defence Force begins its life pre-Federation at Victoria Barracks Sydney. But I also want to make clear that the heritage value of these properties does not belong to the Australian Army or, for that matter, the Australian Defence Force. It belongs to the Australian people.
And right now, the Australian people are prevented from seeing these properties. They exist behind a Defence wall. The War Cabinet Room in Victoria Barracks Melbourne is a room in which some of the most significant decisions were taken around our nation’s independence back in 1941. I’ve seen that room, but the public have not. Now, these properties are protected by law with heritage overlays, and they will exist whatever their future use is. But being opened up and being allowed to be seen by the Australian people is a tremendous heritage outcome, because it returns the heritage value of these properties to the nation. And that is a very important point to understand about them. Today’s reforms will finally see the Defence estate focused on providing the proper foundation for the Australian Defence Force to do its work in defending Australia and in keeping Australians safe.
