00:02A battle over prime Sydney real estate.
00:05Victoria Barracks will be free for all Sydneysiders to enjoy and it will remain in public hands.
00:12Following fierce public backlash, the Prime Minister's abandoning plans to sell off key pieces of Australia's military history.
00:21The Prime Minister has humiliated Richard Miles today because he let Richard Miles spend months going on the public record
00:28defending these sales.
00:30Also saved from the auction hammer, Victoria's Fort Queenscliff and Pointcook RAF base and Melbourne's Victoria Barracks.
00:37The thought of it having been sold and maybe apartments on it was horrifying.
00:4468 defence sites were identified as surplus to requirements as part of a national audit.
00:49Initially just Sydney's Pitwater Annex was marked as safe from the sell off for operational reasons.
00:55Now the four historical sites have been added to the safe list.
00:59I just don't think it makes a lot of sense either financially or from a historical point of view for
01:06the government to embark on those sales.
01:08It is utterly untenable to be spending hundreds of millions of dollars maintaining defence sites as defence sites when we
01:15don't use them.
01:16And when they are not central to the defence of Australia.
01:19The sale of defence land was expected to net the government $1.8 billion.
01:24It's very difficult to see how the government's budget numbers now add up.
01:28In Tasmania, anger remains over the planned sale of the state's only live fire training sites.
01:35I just hope that they expand that backflip and they start looking at a few of the Tasmanian defence establishments.
01:43While communities in Melbourne and Sydney are chalking up today's announcement as a win,
01:47the battle over these defence sites is far from over.
01:50The coalition's continuing to rail against these sell offs as a whole.
01:54And a Senate enquiry into the issue isn't due to report until early next year.
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