Senate Chamber (part 3 of 3)
16 September 2026
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Senate Australian Parliament
00:00 - 02:22
Speaker 1
Apartment blocks built on top of these parade grounds right across Australia. Our sacred parade grounds. The committee heard no compelling evidence that the government has a plan for this transitional management, nor any assurances that places like Victoria Barracks, Sydney or Melbourne or Brisbane will be protected from foreign property developers or ruin. Now, Prime Minister Albanese's own cultural revolution will be the cultural destruction and the darkest stain on his already poor legacy.
The divestment of our active military bases will reduce Australia's resilience in peacetime for counter-terrorism and disaster recovery operations and leaves us exposed in the future with less viability to counter growing strategic threats. Now, the committee heard evidence that the real reason the government's selling off our bases is not about investment in the northern security of Australia, as the Defence Strategic Review recommended. Instead, this committee heard that the gross goal of this sale, of the sales, is to fix a problem not found in defence, but at the Expenditure Review Committee. The failure of the Deputy Prime Minister at that committee to get the money he needs for defence capability and investment must not come at the cost of Australia's security, nor spit in the face of Australia's connection to fallen Australian war heroes. The government throughout the committee's inquiry has failed time and time again to provide departmental evidence in a concise, timely and respectful manner.
Financial evidence has been hidden, strategic rationales have been declined, and the most simple of inquiries have been stonewalled for no good reason. Obstruction is a very good word to describe their participation in this inquiry. And the interim report I tabled today has 11 recommendations, but most importantly, the committee adopted recommendation number one demanding that the Australian government immediately halt the mass divestment program of Australia's foundational defense estate. And I call on the government today, for the first time throughout their campaign to sell off our strategic assets, to listen. Listen to the Australian people as we have done.
Do not sell these defense assets. We must protect them from a government that is hell-bent on ripping out-
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