Big bases in far away places

There is an old temptation in comfortable countries to imagine that defence is something best kept out of sight. Put the uniforms on the periphery. Move the bases away from the cities. Sell the old barracks. Cash in the land. Build apartments, office towers, entertainment precincts, anything more immediately legible to a commercial age than soldiers, stores, drill halls and war rooms.

It is an understandable temptation. It is also, in strategic and civic terms, a dangerous one.

Australia is again speaking the language of danger. Ministers tell us the world is deteriorating. Defence spending is rising. Northern posture matters. Readiness matters. Deterrence matters. Sovereign capability matters. Yet at the same time, the Commonwealth has accepted the Defence Estate Audit’s recommendation for a targeted divestment program, including the whole or partial sale of 67 Defence holdings said not to align with current or future capability priorities. Among the most controversial are Victoria Barracks Sydney, Victoria Barracks Melbourne, Victoria Barracks Brisbane, HMAS Penguin and Spectacle Island. The government’s argument is that Defence is carrying too much legacy estate, much of it decaying, underused and costly to maintain, and that proceeds can be redirected to priority capabilities and northern infrastructure.

That case deserves to be taken seriously. Not every parcel of Defence land is sacred. Not every historic structure remains fit for operational purpose. No serious person argues that sentiment alone should determine force posture. But the present debate risks collapsing several distinct questions into one. A government can quite properly ask whether parts of the estate are inefficient without concluding that visible, historic, centrally located military infrastructure has no enduring national value beyond its sale price.
That is where the argument over places like Victoria Barracks becomes larger than a property story.

A nation’s defence estate is not merely a collection of assets. It is a physical expression of the relationship between the soldier and the state. Barracks in capital cities remind the public that freedom is not self-sustaining. They say, quietly but unmistakably, that the defence of the realm is not an abstract departmental function conducted somewhere far away by someone else. It is part of the life of the nation. It belongs in view.

That visibility matters more than modern Australians often admit. A society that never sees its military gradually ceases to think seriously about what the military is for. It becomes easier to underinvest. Easier to defer. Easier to believe that security can be subcontracted to allies, distance, inertia or luck. Easier, too, to reduce Defence to spreadsheets, acquisition timelines and budget headlines, rather than seeing it as an institution that exists to stand between the country and coercion.

The danger is cultural before it is financial. Once the military is mentally relocated to the margins, physical relocation tends to follow. And once physical relocation follows, the civic connection weakens further still.

This is one reason historic sites matter. They are not important only because they are old. They are important because they connect the present state to the continuity of national service. Victoria Barracks Sydney, completed by convicts between 1841 and 1846, was originally occupied by the British Army and today still houses numerous Army commands, support units and the Army Museum of NSW. Victoria Barracks Melbourne is of such significance that Defence itself notes the first Australian Government War Cabinet meeting was held there on 27 September 1939, and ministers have publicly pointed to its War Cabinet Room as a place bound up with Australia’s wartime independence. Victoria Barracks Brisbane, meanwhile, remains close to the CBD and accommodates office functions, Army Headquarters elements and the Army Museum of South East Queensland.

These are not just blocks of land. They are sites where the Australian state has thought, planned, organised and prepared for war. Their significance is not ornamental. It is constitutional, historical and civic. When the state leaves such places, it is not merely changing tenancy arrangements. It is making a statement about what it wants the public to see, remember and value.

The government replies that sale can improve public access. There is force in that. Defence’s own audit found that much military heritage is poorly curated and hard for the public to reach, with many museums and displays located on bases requiring sign-in and escort. Ministers argue that these sites belong to the Australian people, not merely to Defence, and that divestment may allow more Australians to experience them.

Again, that point should not be dismissed. But one must ask: opened to what, and on whose terms? Public access is not the same thing as public meaning. A former barracks turned into a luxury precinct with a heritage plaque is not equivalent to an enduring military presence integrated into the life of the city. A museum preserved behind commercial redevelopment is not the same as a functioning institution that keeps alive the connection between past service and present obligation.

Sale also brings strategic questions that are too easily brushed aside by the language of “underutilisation”. A site can be less than fully efficient in peacetime and still matter in crisis. A centrally located Defence footprint may prove valuable for command, logistics, contingency response, mobilisation, liaison, ceremonial functions, recruitment, reservist activity and civil-military coordination. The Defence Estate Audit is explicit that many Reserve depots are inefficient and underused, often active only once a week after hours. That may be true. Yet Reserve inefficiency is not solved simply by erasing presence. It may instead suggest the need for better integration, rationalisation, shared use, or adaptive reuse that preserves strategic depth in the very population centres from which a democracy draws its people, legitimacy and will.

This is where history offers a warning. Nations rarely regret preparedness when danger arrives. They regret the years in which they talked themselves into believing that preparedness was a poor use of valuable land. They regret the closure, contraction and disposal decisions made under the spell of administrative neatness. They regret confusing the absence of immediate invasion with the absence of strategic risk.

Australia should beware this mistake. We have become accustomed to discussing defence through the lens of remoteness. Northern bases, long-range strike, sea-air gap, expeditionary distances, the tyranny of geography. All of that is real. But there is another geography that matters: the geography of national consciousness. If every meaningful military presence is pushed to “big bases in faraway places”, then the ordinary Australian encounters Defence less as a lived national institution than as an abstraction. The result is a people asked to fund national defence while being culturally estranged from it.

Israel offers a useful contrast. Whatever one thinks of every policy or decision of the Israeli state, Israel understands something Australians too often forget: defence must be woven into national life, not hidden from it. The Israel Defense Forces present themselves unapologetically as central to safeguarding the state and its residents, and Israel’s Ministry of Defense is headquartered in central Tel Aviv. In other words, military purpose is not banished from civic consciousness. It sits in plain sight because the state recognises that security is not someone else’s business. It is the precondition for all other business.

Australia is not Israel, and should not pretend to be. Our circumstances differ. Our threat environment differs. Our strategic culture differs. But the underlying truth does not differ: a way of life that is not defended can be lost. And a society that ceases to visibly honour the institutions that defend it will, over time, find it harder to summon the seriousness those institutions require.

That is why the issue is not whether every old barracks must remain frozen in amber. Clearly not. Some sites may indeed be better repurposed, consolidated or partially divested. But the present direction feels too often like retreat masquerading as reform. It risks telling Australians that Defence is something best concentrated elsewhere, while our capital-city heritage is monetised in the name of modernisation. It risks trading depth for efficiency, memory for liquidity, presence for proceeds.

Soldiers understand something the modern administrative state sometimes does not. Institutions are built not only from capabilities, but from symbols, habits, stories and places. Parade grounds, barracks gates, memorial halls, command buildings and museums do more than occupy land. They shape culture. They remind the nation that service is real, that sacrifice has occurred, and that the state has duties before it has development opportunities.

The phrase “sale at what cost?” is not rhetorical. It is the right question.
What is the cost of shrinking the visible military inheritance of a free people? What is the cost of teaching another generation that security infrastructure in our great cities is surplus to requirement? What is the cost of severing, site by site, the bond between the citizen, the soldier and the state?

Governments must husband resources. They must make hard choices. They must adapt estate to strategy. But they should also know that not all value can be measured in disposal receipts. Some value lies in continuity. Some in symbolism. Some in strategic optionality. Some in the quiet but indispensable reminder, in the middle of national life, that the freedoms of a democratic people do not defend themselves.

That reminder should not be sold cheaply.

Colonel Michael Scott CSC Ret’d is a former Australian army officer and the founder of The 2023 Foundation, an initiative dedicated to combating antisemitism.