House debates Questions without Notice

Defence Properties

Monday, 26 October 2026 House of Representatives

Richard Marles

Richard Marles Corio, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence

2:51 pm

I thank the member for his question. What was clear, when we came to government, was that we had, as a nation, a significant defence estate, much of which we did not use, and we were spending not hundreds of thousands of dollars in maintaining it but hundreds of millions. We undertook an independent audit of the entire defence estate to properly understand what Defence needed and what it didn't so that we could make sure the defence estate properly grounded the work of the Australian Defence Force. I'd invite the member to read what those independent auditors said not just about Victoria Barracks, Sydney, but about the management of the defence estate in total, because it's actually damning of successive governments in terms of facing up to the fact that the defence estate has not been maintained in terms of what is needed for our future defence.

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