Senator David Shoebridge

Thanks for the invitation to be here. And congratulations on the community for. For turning out in numbers to send a clear message about protecting public land and keeping it in public hands. I want to start by acknowledging it's Cammeraygal land that we're on, and the site that we're talking about is Cammeraygal land.

And I sometimes think about what an extraordinary place Sydney would have been 250 years ago, and the Angophora forest that would have covered not a necklace around the city, but this incredible natural web that would have been here. And how much damage we've done to the natural world and to much of this continent in the last 250 years.

And therefore, what an absolute obligation we have to protect what is left and to get some of that wisdom of first nations peoples to hold on to that. And so when we say it's Camaragal land, I think we should acknowledge our obligation to work with first nations peoples to protect these precious partners of this continent and to learn from first nations peoples who managed to live on this continent for 60 or 70,000 years and keep these precious places.

And if you walk around that Angophora forest and you have a look at the extraordinary nature that we have been blessed with on this continent. If for no other reason, let's protect these beautiful natural places. And for you, Billy [Billy a Year 5 School student who delivered a short speech about the loss of public land if HMAS Penguin is sold], too, and for your generation as well, and thanks for reminding us of that really critical.

Thank you. So it's really hard to know where to start with the proposal that the government has to flog off 67 different patches of public land. It's not defence land. It is public land that they're proposing to sell. And we need to constantly remind Defence and the federal government of this. And as has been pointed out, there are parts of the defence estate that would be incredibly useful for being repurposed for things like public housing, public open space, community facilities.

Like there is a lot of defence land and public land which we could actively look at to repurpose for public use. And, you know, we should be doing that, and we should be looking at not just the defence estate, but public land held by state governments, federal governments, government agencies to get the best possible public benefit and use out of public land.

And we should always be willing to do that. But I want to be clear about one thing, this has been sold as having been the result of a Defence audit, a careful national audit of the defence estate. And we found out in the first few hours of our public inquiry, our Senate inquiry into this, that this was not an audit at all.

This was not done by auditors, it was not done to the standards of an audit, it was not impartial and professional. And the two authors of this so-called audit, I think it was in the first, like 20 minutes of us interrogating them, started running away from the description of being an audit.

They said, no, no, no, it's not an audit, it's just a review, it's not a Capital A Audit. And then when I pointed out to them that the covering letter that they both signed called it a Capital A Audit, and maybe that was a little bit, you know, not accurate, the kind of embarrassment level built and built and built.

And of course, it wasn't an audit to meet the standards of an audit, because they looked at 67 different sites, all handcrafted by Defence and given to them by Defence, and they never went to a site for more than one day, they never spent more than one day on any one of these sites.

And I've got to tell you, when you go to HMAS Penguin, as Jess and I and the committee did, you only have to be there a couple of hours to work out. If you want to understand the complexity of one of these sites, you'd have to spend a week there and you'd have to talk to all the different stakeholders.

You may have to talk to the local council, you have to talk to local residents. But I would have thought you'd first talk to Defence. Right, you talk to Defence and ask them what are you using the land currently for? And do you know what was remarkable? We were on site at HMAS Penguin doing that, talking to Defence, asking them what they're currently using the site for, asking them what the proposal is if this land gets sold.

And you know what they're using the site for. They're using the site for the RAN Diving School, the only diving school in the country for the Royal Australian Navy. And one of the reasons why they need that is they've got a wharf and deep water access and they're also right next to Balmoral Beach.

And when you train Navy divers, you want to be able to do some of the deep water work, which can be incredibly dangerous, but you also need to train navy divers in how to approach a beach. And, you know, one of the critical reasons we have that site is because it's right at Balmoral Beach.

And the audit, the original audit said, flog the whole site off and there will be some magic alternative for where we can run the Royal Australian Navy Diving school. And when we asked the diving school, did they speak to you about any of this? The answer was no. And even when they've redrawn the line now, after the initial audit said sell the whole site, they've now redrawn the line to say they're only going to sell part of the site that actually prevents the diving school from getting access to Balmoral Beach.

We were literally on there looking at the current access site to Balmoral beach, talking with the diving school and saying, asking the defence bureaucrats, well, hang on, isn't this bit here being proposed to be sold? And, you know, we got a bunch of. It was quite a prolonged conversation. They eventually conceded that it was about to be sold.

And then we said, well, how is the diving school going to get access to the beach? And they said, oh, well, we're going to consult on that later. And when we asked about the accommodation, and there's a conference centre and accommodation used not just by the navy, but the army, the Air Force, the New South Wales Police, the conference thing is incredibly busy.

There's about 240 housing units there, individual accommodation units there. We asked, is that being used? And Defence said, yep, it's got normally about an 80% to a 90% occupancy rate, and the conference centre is constantly being used, constantly being booked out and booked out months and months in advance. And so when we said to defence, well, what's your plan for accommodating the 80 to 90%, the 240 people that you need to accommodate for these conferences?

Do you know what they said? Oh, we're going to consult on that and have a plan for that. And their original plan was even to sell off the war and the deep water. And it's not just HMAS Penguin where we're having this conversation with Defence. And one thing is we're getting from the bureaucrats and another thing, very different messages we're getting from the services when we're on the ground.

We went to Victoria Barracks in Sydney, which is Headquarters Command, like, it's one of the critical command units inside the Defence Force that enables all the other units to communicate with each other inside the adf, Right? And it also has an incredible history and an incredible heritage. Victoria Barracks in Sydney. And when we were talking to Headquarters Command, the defence wants to sell off Victoria Barracks and move them off.

We said, well, where's Headquarters Command going to go? They said, there is no plan. They're consulting and they're talking. We were down in Victoria Barracks in Victoria in Melbourne. An extraordinary property. If people aren't as familiar with Victoria Barracks in Melbourne, Sydney, but I've got to tell you, it's an extraordinary blue stone defence property built in the 1860s that houses 1500 current defence force personnel who are critical to this unit called CAS G, which is kind of like part of the procurement, the critical procurement part of defence.

We spoke to the defence personnel down there and said, well, you're all based in all these heritage offices. Are the heritage offices fit for purpose? Is it a good place to work? Yep, it's great. We really like it. It's fit for purpose. We have 1500 personnel working here. Very happily. Defence says that they need to sell it off because of the incredible cost for maintenance.

So we asked them, how much does it cost to maintain Victoria Barracks in Victoria? Do you know how much it cost last year? $800,000. We said to them, well, what are you planning to do with the 1500 defence personnel who are currently working in this incredible site? What's your plan for this defence unit?

“We don't have a plan. We're consulting now.” It turns out that they're probably going to be leasing temporary office holdings to house some of those 1500 staff. That would cost you more than the $800,000 they're using maintaining Victoria Barracks. And they're telling us this is about budget and they're telling us this is about saving money for defence.

Just the sheer organisational chaos of moving all of those units, shaking them all up, finding them temporary office accommodation, the loss of history, the loss of connection that is bad for Defence if for no other reason. And the idea that at the end of this we're going to be saving money is a plain farce.

And we could have repeated this conversation for pretty much every site that Defence is looking at. To suggest that it's a plan or a review is a joke. Now, can I just quickly deal with HMAS Penguin? One of the reasons we're having this inquiry and, you know, I moved the motion to establish a Senate inquiry into the lands and we got support from Jess and her team, we got support from the crossbench.

Labour opposed it, but they kind of had to suck it up because they didn't have the numbers in the Senate, was because this is not a done deal. This is far from a done deal. There is significant resistance inside the defence establishment for the Sale of many of these sites that have current important utility inside defence, but also the idea that we would be selling critical public land and the only thing they're looking at is to maximise market return, is an obscenity in my mind.

It is an obscenity. And in fact, when you look at the divestment rules that apply for public land, the first thing the Commonwealth government is meant to do before they sell, they call it divest, but before they sell land, is to first look for an alternate public use for, for that land. All right?

That is their first obligation. And this audit just stepped right over that. Without even looking at the divestment policy, without even troubling defence or the Commonwealth government with their first fundamental obligation is if you don't want to use this for defence land, you first have to look for an alternate public purpose. And I can tell you what the obvious alternate public purpose for HMAS Penguin is.

It's to not have a missing tooth in the smile in Middle Harbour. It's to actually, if they are going to do it, put it in the hands of the Trust so as we can complete that extraordinary heritage and natural precinct in Middle Harbour. And there's multiple reasons why we'll win this. One is that it makes zero defence sense to sell off a tiny patch.

The other reason is we will not let them bulldoze that forest. And I'll come here and chain myself to one of those trees with you to ensure that bloody well doesn't happen. And we will make any proposed sale of this such a disaster zone for any proposed developer who at best would get a thin little ribbon of development.

That we want to make this a non starter from the outset. There's only one solution for this and that is to keep the land in public hands. And maybe the best solution is to keep it in the defence estate being used for critical defence purposes and turn that forest into part of that beautiful Natural Heritage Trust.

Maybe that's the best result, or maybe the other result is to put anything that's been disposed of into the Sydney Harbour Federation Trust. But I can tell you this, we're here together, we're here united. We cross politics on this HMAS Penguin, the land on which HMAS Penguin is this precious public land, this forest, this heritage, will and must remain in public hands.