Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

After more than 25 years of service in the Royal Australian Navy, HMAS Newcastle was decommissioned at Garden Island in Sydney on 30 June 2019. Since she was commissioned in 1993, HMAS Newcastle has been deployed to the Middle East six times, as well as to East Timor and the Persian Gulf. She also conducted peacekeeping operations in the Solomon Islands and humanitarian missions, including rescuing yachtsmen injured in the 1998 Sydney to Hobart race. The people of Newcastle have great affection for HMAS Newcastle, which has been crewed by many Novocastrians during its lifetime. Indeed, Commander Sellick, a proud Novocastrian woman, was given the keys to the city when she captained the ship back to Newcastle for its final time in June this year. I was also thrilled to meet up with my ADF exchange buddy, Natalie Brennan, sub lieutenant in the Royal Australian Navy, on that same trip.

But today I rise on behalf of the people of Newcastle to call on the minister and the Chief of Navy to retain and perpetuate the name HMAS Newcastle and to keep that in circulation for a future Royal Australian Navy ship. It's sad enough that we have lost the ship HMAS Newcastle, but let's not now lose the name itself.