Albanese pulls four heritage defence sites off the auction block

Four heritage-listed defence sites are off the market. The Albanese government confirmed on Sunday that Victoria Barracks in Sydney and Melbourne, plus Fort Queenscliff and RAAF Base Point Cook in Victoria, will remain publicly owned, with their historic features preserved for community use once defence personnel move out.

The U-turn lands just ahead of Monday's cabinet expenditure review committee meeting, where budget decisions get made. The government says it will team up with the Australian War Memorial to turn the vacated sites into public spaces that tell the story of Australia's military.

The sites had been lumped in with 63 others in a multi-year audit finished in 2023, which branded them underutilised, unfit for purpose and expensive to keep. Selling the Sydney and Melbourne barracks alone was expected to bring in $1.3bn, and 26 major metropolitan sites were tipped to raise up to $2.4bn while saving roughly $3bn in upkeep and security over a decade. The government still wants those sales to free up land for housing, with a long-term target of 6,000 new dwellings.

That plan ran into a wall of opposition. Save Victoria Barracks Sydney, veterans and former prime ministers John Howard and Paul Keating all pushed back hard. Anthony Albanese said Victoria Barracks Sydney holds a special place in the nation's history, while defence minister Richard Marles argued the money is better spent on capability. According to the Guardian, Marles said moving personnel off the sites and opening them to the public would return that history to all Australians.

Not everyone is done fighting. Shadow defence minister James Paterson called the reversal a win for defence heritage but only a beginning, vowing the Coalition will keep pushing to save HMAS Penguin, Lancer Barracks and Irwin Barracks. NSW opposition leader Kellie Sloane said the site is an irreplaceable piece of military heritage and that capability must come before a short-term cash grab.

Sydney's Victoria Barracks went up between 1840 and 1848, originally housing British troops, and hides the city's oldest wine cellar. Defence expects personnel to have cleared six sites by year's end, with the audit warning that decades of deferred decisions had left the estate on an unsustainable path.