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

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Dealing with the estate is business which is long overdue in terms of managing Defence policy. As a government we are tackling difficult issues. We are working with communities around Australia who are proximate to each of these estates, each of these Defence properties, each of these bases, including HMAS Penguin, and we are absolutely committed to working through with the community on what is the future use of HMAS Penguin. We have been doing that from the moment that we did the Defence Estate Audit and had an examination as to whether each of these properties had a role to play in our Defence Force, and, if not, what role they could otherwise play.

As I assume the member may know, the process that we have announced is that these properties will be transferred from the Department of Defence to the Department of Finance relatively quickly over the next couple of years, but from there the process of disposing of the properties will take as long as it does. That means that there will be adequate time in which to engage with communities to deal with questions such as the one that the honourable member has raised. We certainly are very willing to work through those issues with the honourable member along with the Assistant Minister for Defence, the member for Wills, who has carriage of this, to make sure that as we manage the future of HMAS Penguin, be inside Defence or beyond, it is a future which has the best outcome for the community in your electorate.

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