Chris Smith:
Roger, well, this isn’t a tidy up. This is the largest military property selloff in Australian history and it’s being waved through like a routine budget item. The Albanese government has agreed to put 64 defence sites on the market. They’re describing them as vacant and decaying, which isn’t quite true. And they’ve got a potential price tag of up to $3 billion. That will pay for a large chunk of government spending. Some of the most valuable and historically significant military land in the country though is what they’re talking about. Now, I’m all for selling defence sites that are unused, that don’t have the same historical value to this country as others do. That makes sense to me. But to put the 64 defence sites in a one size fits all policy I think is dangerous. Victoria Barracks in Paddington, for instance, prime Sydney real estate with deep military history.
It’s Melbourne counterpart, inner city depots, barracks, training sites, places that once formed the backbone of defence presence in our cities. Finance Minister Katie Gallagher says the money will be reinvested in defence priorities. As if. Fellow at the Institute for Public Affairs and former Defence Deputy Secretary Peter Jennings says far less money will be realised. Many of these sites are tied up by heritage rules. Others are contaminated, meaning defence will spend millions cleaning them up before they’re even sellable. Peter is on the line right now. Peter Jennings, welcome to the Super Radio Network.
Peter Jennings:
Thank you so much, Chris.
Chris Smith:
The government says this will raise $3 billion for defence. Do you believe that?
Peter Jennings:
No, not for a minute. Because of the costs that you just mentioned, all of those iconic inner city sites are heritage listed, and they’re not going to be turned into apartment blocks. Chris, that simply won’t happen. Then the cost of remediation and the cost of moving defence people out to other locations, that will all add significantly to the bill. And I’d have to say, governments have been around this boy before. I was involved with the Howard government, I have to say 30 years ago now, on a defence efficiency review, which actually listed a number of the properties that the labour government has currently put up for sale again just yesterday. And the reality is that you don’t realise significant amounts of money. I’ll give you a quick example. You may remember there was an artillery range on North Head in Sydney.
Chris Smith:
Yeah.
Peter Jennings:
And the Howard government put that up for sale or said they were going to. Developers had their eyes rolling with the thought of all of that housing development. But then in practise, it turned out that Sydney Siders didn’t want to see housing development on that beautiful natural land at North Head. So it was gifted to the state government and it became a nature reserve, after defence spent millions cleaning up the site to make sure there was no unexploded artillery shells. No money was made. Expense was significant. And that’s the sort of experience that this government will have when it tries to sell some of these remaining defence assets.
Chris Smith:
So they’ll come to roadblock after roadblock in many of these sites, just like the Howard government did 30 years ago.
Peter Jennings:
Absolutely they will. And there’ll be strong opposition to it, particularly for heritage reasons. Of the sites that the government lists, the bulk of them are reserve depots or areas where cadets train. I’m sure there are some which can be reasonably sold, but I’m concerned that this is also going to reduce the size of the defence military footprint in our communities. These are the communities that defence has to recruit from. And it’s pointless saying to a bunch of cadets in a reserve depot or a cadet training establishment, well, you can now travel a hundred kilometres to the Melbourne CBD to be a cadet. The chances are they’ll mostly just decide not to be cadets. And so this becomes, I think, a way of really reducing defense’s engagement with the community for not much return financially. The government just doesn’t know what it doesn’t know. It’s got no sense of the history of what’s been done in the past in this area.
And I think Richard Miles probably won’t realise that he’s just created a lot of woe for himself. He’s going to get a lot of his back benches calling him up outraged that their particular reserve depot or their heritage military site is now going to be shut down. They will not realise anywhere near the amount of money that they’re talking about, and it will create a huge disruption for the defence organisation. All the way around, it’s a really bad idea.
Chris Smith:
But it gives Jim Charmers an opportunity to go to the next budget and start saying, we’re going to get three billion for this and now look at our bottom line. Doesn’t it?
Peter Jennings:
Yes, absolutely it does. And that means that once again, the talk of defence spending increases, which they’re supposed to be contemplating, is going to get kicked further down the road. This is all about pretending that there is significant money to be realised in defence. Government after government has tried to do this. And the truth of the matter is that what we need now overall is an increase in defence spending given our strategic outlook. You can’t squeeze that out of the estate of the defence organisation, not without making defence smaller. And that I think is this impossible task that the government has set for itself.
Chris Smith:
Yeah. I know the conversation so far has focused on what historical value we could be throwing away, but you’re right. And this is the reason I wanted to speak with you after your column today, because strategically the plan pushes defence into fewer larger bases, but those around us in the Indo-Pacific are increasing their military footprint. And we have missile threats left, right, and centre if Taiwan erupts. We’re heading in the wrong direction, aren’t we?
Peter Jennings:
Yes. I think one of the problem is that the review that the government released is actually three years old, and it doesn’t take into account that strategic developments are moving very quickly. China now has the ability to hit any large Australian military base with missiles. That’s something that’s relatively new in terms of the threat that we face. And no one’s giving serious consideration to how we have to deal with that reality. So this review talks about base security, but they talk about it primarily in the context of fencing. What about the threat from drones? What about the biggest strategic threat which says, “Well, maybe our defence force should actually be getting bigger rather than shrinking in size.” None of that is actually considered in this current report. It’s very backward looking. I think it’s going to do damage to the defence force at precisely the time when we should really be thinking about expansion more than anything else.
Chris Smith:
Yeah, well said. Peter Jennings, thank you very much for giving us the time this morning.
Peter Jennings:
Thanks so much, Chris.
Chris Smith:
All right. Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs, this bloke knows his stuff, Peter Jennings, and he’s right. It’s not just about what we’re losing historically. We’re going in the wrong direction here. And they’ve had this review sitting in a file somewhere for two and a half odd years. Why didn’t they act on it when it was released? Well, probably for all the reasons that Peter Jennings has said, they knew what the history of this has been and how difficult it would be to clean up these sites and have them sold off anyway with the Heritage Council down their neck, an impossibility, certainly with the number that they’re attempting to sell. But what happens when you get close to a budget and you realise, oh my goodness, we’ve spent so much money, we’ve got to start making the budget look half decent? Where’s that report that they suggested about selling off all those bases? Yeah, throw that in. That’ll make the budget bottom line much better when Jim gets on his feet in parliament. I know that’s awfully cynical, but I actually think it’s…
This transcript of Peter Jennings speaking on Chris Smith – 2SM from 5 February 2026 has been edited for clarity.
