Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Defence. The Woodside Barracks, established in 1927, is historically, militarily and economically important for my Mayo community. The base also hosts over 100 army and air force cadets—regional young people, many of whom are interested in a military career. Will the Woodside Barracks remain an operational base, and will you rule out selling off the land as currently speculated?

Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for her question. As the member would be aware, the government has undertaken a review into the Defence Estate to ensure that the Defence Estate is the appropriate platform that it should be for the Defence Force that we need and for the Defence Force to achieve the strategic aims that we need it to in what is a very difficult world. I'm not going to go into the specifics of any defence site and walk down the path of that before the government releases its response to the estate review. We are currently in the process of working that response through. We've received the report from those who have undertaken it. We need to be ensuring that all the implications in relation to personnel associated with the thorough review of our Defence Estate are completely worked through, and that will take some months to do. It is not our intention to respond to the review until some time next year because of the work that is involved in relation to that.

Having said that, I acknowledge what the member has said about the Woodside Barracks and its significance. Of course, pretty much every member of this place will have a part of the Defence Estate within their electorate. Defence is one of, if not the biggest, landowner in the country, so this is an important process to go through. But, as I say, the government is working this through in detail, and I'm very happy to brief the member at greater detail at a later stage.