Phillip Thompson (Herbert, Liberal National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Townsville is the capital of the Australian Army. Our city will be the new home for all of the Army's tanks, Boxer Combat Reconnaissance Vehicles, Redback infantry fighting vehicles and Huntsman self-propelled howitzers. These, along with the Apache and Chinook helicopter fleets, elevates Townsville to Australian's most critical army garrison town.

This is why I've welcomed the most recent announcement of the restructure that will see more than 500 uniformed Army personnel moved to Townsville by 2025 and our 3rd Brigade become an armoured combat brigade. That's 500 Army personnel. Families will be included as well, which will see us go well over 1,200 people moving to Townsville. This restructure will bolster our strength and defence capability as well as confirm Townsville as the Australian Army capital.

This is a great announcement and it has several benefits from a defence perspective. It is strategically a good move. Our 3rd Brigade as an armoured brigade is the lethality that we need in the north. The 3rd Brigade is known to deploy first, to deploy often and to go into those places that many don't want to. We saw recently the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, with attachments, go on the rescue mission into Afghanistan.

Townsville's landscape is also a very similar environment to what we may expect to see when we fight overseas. You need to be able to train with what you'll fight with. So we need to have the equipment, we need to have the people and we need to have the will to be able to go and train to what we may be expected to see on the battlefield. There's no point having tanks down south or infantry fighting vehicles in the west when you've got the brigade that does the fighting in Townsville. Having everything together will allow us to be able to train with the equipment. You train with the equipment that you fight with. You can't replicate an infantry fighting vehicle or a tank. You need to have that equipment on the ground now, as well as the Chinooks that we've had for a long time, operating with the Apaches. In combat overseas on the battlefield, when the Chinooks are flying, the Apaches are providing support. When you're in a contact on the battlefield, Apaches are coming overhead to make sure that you're okay and you remain safe. So I think bringing these 500 Army personnel and their families to Townsville is a good move.

But there are questions. Where will they live? Do we have the facilities for them? Will they be able to move straightaway? Where will they reside in Townsville? I think the families ask the same question. They're being told that they're relocating from Adelaide to Townsville, but they want to look for a home, somewhere they can raise their family, a place they can call theirs. We need Defence Housing Australia to change what they've been doing for some time. DHA goes and buys a house—an already built place—and wants to move families that move to Townsville into them. That doesn't work when you have a rental market so low. DHA need to now do what they used to do which is buy blocks of land and buy dwellings from the developers so that they can buy hundreds at a time to ensure that houses can be built to make sure that our people can get the housing that they need.

I've written to the Assistant Minister for Defence, who covers DHA, and I've given him these suggestions. We need DHA to do what they've normally done, and that's to buy these blocks. But we also need to look at: Do we have the infrastructure, the support, around it? Do we have roads that can take the amount of traffic? Right now there are certain places in the North Shore where, if there was an accident, delay or congestion, it would be a 30- to 40-minute traffic delay. These things need to be addressed before you put an extra 500 people or more on the ground in the northern suburbs. These key areas that have been overlooked need to be addressed before people move here. We're asking the government to work with locals to ensure that houses are there and that roads and trunk infrastructure are built, because we want to welcome the soldiers and their families to Townsville.