Opinion
My folks own two hectares of land that was once an Australian Army base.
Up to 80,000 men went through the base, which became a migrant camp after World War II.
When my parents bought the block two decades ago, there were three signs of its military past: a concrete cricket pitch, a bitumen road and a particularly green piece of ground.
The green area, above which a line of latrines had once lived, proved particularly beneficial to Mum’s trees.
But, unlike some of the crazed responses to the federal government’s plan to finally sell some Defence properties, there weren’t protests and cries of desecration to the memory of the Anzacs when this land was sold off (first to a farmer and then to the residents who now live there).
The overwrought reaction to the long-awaited and much-needed audit of Defence properties released by Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles this month highlights the huge problems this country has dealing with difficult – or even not-so-difficult – issues.
The audit was completed in late 2023 after the wide-ranging Defence Strategic Review of the previous year recommended a proper examination of the vast collection of bases, properties and infrastructure held by the department.
That review found that once an audit was done, investment had to be made in the Defence estate with priority investments “focused on the northern Australian bases in the first instance”.
The Defence Department holds 3.8 million hectares, or an area roughly the size of Switzerland. There are 70 major bases, more than 100 training ranges, in excess of 1000 leased or owned properties, plus 30,000 or so buildings.
The audit recommended 68 properties be sold (the government agreed to 67), with the cash raised by the sale pumped back into new and existing properties. Apart from raising about $3 billion, it found the department would save at least $100 million a year in ongoing maintenance costs.
Among the properties up for sale is a quarter-hectare block in Grattan Street, Carlton, just outside Melbourne’s CBD. It’s currently home to a few Defence staff who would be moved to the underutilised (and very expensive) Defence Plaza site in the city centre.
Ten kilometres away in Maribyrnong is 127 hectares – an area about the size of a suburb – that has been vacant since 2006 and is in the process of being sold.
In Sydney, there’s almost 17 hectares of vacant land in Randwick, unused since 1990, that’s within walking distance of a tram line.
A 3.6-hectare remnant of Defence land in Penrith, vacant since 2016, is planned to be sold, while up the road, there’s a 63-hectare block in Londonderry that abuts suburban homes. It has been vacant since 2013.
Near central Darwin, there’s a 123-hectare block that has never been used since a navy telegraph station was built nearby in 1939.
Five golf courses, including an 18-hole one in Canberra (which is home to another five courses, a pitch-and-putt course and a Defence course at Duntroon), are also on the chopping block.
These properties, and many more, are clearly surplus to requirements. In many cases, they offer land that can be turned into housing or commercial property.
But the near-hysterical response, including among politicians from the left and right, focused almost entirely on three sites.
The beautiful and historically important Victoria Barracks in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane were all used as arguments against any change.
My esteemed colleague, Tony Wright, wrote a beautiful piece last week about the War Cabinet Room that hides in the Victoria Barracks on Melbourne’s St Kilda Road.
Sadly, the cabinet room, along with other heritage displays at the site, are not open to the public.
There is a specialist library on site, but it’s only open two days a week and requires an escort and visitor sign-in. Last year, 77 non-Defence staff visited that library.
Similarly, the Victoria Barracks in Sydney – the home of Australia’s defence forces – is hidden away from the prying eyes of ordinary people.
There is a museum that’s open for four hours every Thursday (and one Sunday a month). Through 2024-25, the museum attracted 1537 people, of which just 835 were civilians.
According to critics, these properties will be turned into 20- or 30-storey apartment blocks for the wealthy. The nation’s military history will be lost among new kitchens and bedrooms.
But they entirely ignore the heritage protections on each site that prohibit the destruction of buildings and which will make it almost impossible to turn them into high-density residential enclaves.
They ignore how these sites aren’t open to the public. They ignore how underutilised these locations are now and the cost of maintaining them. And they ignore the need for Defence to spend more, in other parts of the country, on its core job – defending the nation.
The Coalition, beset by its internal problems, claimed it was “lazy” policy but provided no insight into why the Defence Department should continue to own property it doesn’t use.
The lazy option is to do nothing and just watch buildings rot away and become home to possums while spending more and more on security to protect them from vandals.
Defence spending is increasing ($51 billion this year and $61 billion by 2028-29) and will lift even further. A federal budget under pressure on everything from aged care to veterans, means every department – including Defence – has to get value for money.
Even the Diggers who once sat on the toilet on the land that my mum now tends could see that a choice between a golf course or a new submarine is a no-brainer.
Shane Wright is a senior economics correspondent for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.
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