00:02A building steeped in military history, its bluestone walls dating back to the 1850s.
00:09Now Victoria Barracks will be saved from the auction hammer.
00:13The thought of it having been sold and maybe apartments on it was horrifying.
00:20It will be something that people can enjoy for the years to come.
00:24Sixty-eight defence sites around Australia were identified as surplus to requirements as part of a national audit.
00:32Initially, just Sydney's Pitwater Annex was marked as safe from the sell-off for operational reasons.
00:38Now four historical sites, including the barracks in Melbourne, have been added to the safe list.
00:43Also safe, Victoria's Point Cook RAAF base and Fort Queenscliff, as well as Sydney's Victoria Barracks.
00:51They'll be opened up to the public, but the government hasn't ruled out commercial use.
00:55What we're open to is making sure that there's proper use of the site is respected.
01:01The backflip follows fierce public backlash from people like Carol Hill and Klaus Mattei from the Save Victoria Barracks Alliance.
01:09Today's announcement is being met with cautious optimism.
01:12I'm very happy about that decision, but as they say, the devil is in the details.
01:19So we have absolutely no detail of how this is going to work.
01:24Defence personnel will need to vacate this building as it's transferred into the hands of the finance department.
01:30That's why the opposition is only calling this a partial win.
01:33It's critically important that these bases remain available for military use because we are living in a dangerous world.
01:40It is utterly untenable to be spending hundreds of millions of dollars maintaining defence sites as defence sites when we
01:47don't use them.
