Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence) | Hansard source

I thank the member for her question. Order the member for Mitchell. For too long, the question of Defence as a state has been ignored. It was certainly ignored by those opposite when they were in government. As a result, when we look through the Defence Strategic Review about the bases that we need, the focus is on creating much more capable northern bases which can project our Air Force further, but in the same breath it highlights the fact that, as the largest landowner in the country, Defence today is operating many properties which are costing, if not hundreds of thousands then hundreds of millions of dollars to maintain, yet those properties do nothing in terms of Australia's capability.

We hear guffawing from those opposite, and we hear it because in their nine years in government they rotated defence ministers through the portfolio so quickly that they could never get around to the business of actually managing defence, and they left this as an untouched—

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