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May 21, 2026
MICHEAL MCLAREN: I'm only a little player in a big pond. Someone who can make a bigger ripple when he's thrown in is the bloke sitting with me in the studio, Shadow Defence Minister Senator James Paterson. He's launched his own campaign to save several key sites including the barracks in Sydney. He's with me in the studio. Welcome.
SENATOR JAMES PATERSON: Michael, great to be with you, and thank you for your leadership on this, and the leadership that 2GB is showing on this issue. You are championing a really important cause not just for our community, but for our country.
MCLAREN: Well, look, I mean, I'm not a historian, but I studied it, the history. I've got no military blood, as far as I'm aware. Certainly in the contemporary sense. But I look at a site like Victoria Barracks, and as a Sydneysider, as an Australian, I realise its value, not just from a historical point of view, and I think you and I would agree, there is a very strong, important golden thread that goes through military history, not just here, but throughout the entire British story. That can't be overlooked. But it's not just about the history and the heritage, it's about the here and the now and the practicalities, and Ken Gillespie and others have pointed out exactly why this site is valuable.
PATERSON: Exactly right. If this was only about history, I would still be concerned and I would think it was misguided, but this is about much more than just history, it's about modern capability, it's the kind of country that we want to be, and the kind of facilities that we're going to need to do that. And I thought Ken Gillespie's evidence before the Senate committee to my colleague Jess Collins the other day was very instructive. I mean, in 2007, when Australia hosted APEC, when the world leaders were present in Sydney and they needed a facility to stage people from the special forces capability, counterterrorism capability, Victoria Barracks Sydney is where they chose…
MCLAREN: …It's where the Black Hawks land.
PATERSON: Exactly, and we had men and women there ready to deploy at short notice if it was necessary if a security incident arose. Now that is a kind of capability that is not easily supplemented elsewhere. It's not clear where else you would do that from in a city like Sydney, and it's true of other cities like Melbourne as well. These are critical, modern Defence capabilities, and just moving people into an office tower might make sense on a spreadsheet, but I think it really is something much more than that.
MCLAREN: Okay, let's just hone in on this issue, because we can talk about the sandstone, we can talk about the men that went through those gates and never came back from Gallipoli onwards. We could talk about all of that, and I think I'm not glossing over it. That is very important, certainly in the military story. But the practicality of this site, ok, so let's say we flog it off and it becomes a basket weaver's market on a Sunday and then there's fire twirlers, and who knows what they're doing, it's an arts precinct or some rubbish, and there's a development on the edge. So the Black Hawks can't come in anymore, it's not practical. Where do they go in Sydney should there be - heaven forbid - a terrorist attack?
PATERSON: Well exactly, and no adequate explanation has been given to the public about this. We're just told, don't worry, Defence has thought about this, Defence has planned around this, and they're confident it's not a problem. Well, I'm not willing to just take the government's word for that, given that their motivation is to raise as much money as possible to cover up the fact that they're not funding the ADF properly. That's the real core of this, this is where this really starts from, is that this government is unwilling to - from ordinary consolidated revenue - fund Defence adequately, so they're finding other ways to do it. And in the scheme of things $1.8 billion - which is the supposed net proceeds we're going to get out of the sale...
MCLAREN: ....one and a bit weeks of the NDIS...
PATERSON: That's right. Exactly. And in a context of the Defence budget, which spends a bit over $60 billion a year, I mean, that's a couple of months of Defence funding. I would never turn my nose down at money like that. But in the context of Defence, it is really not big picture money, and it's really money that the government should be able to find from its other priorities.
MCLAREN: Okay, now on the money, let's say they are going to get their way, and look what they've done with the budget. They look like they just want to ram any old thing through. So they'll give this a shake. Now, they reckon because the modelling says they're going to raise a lot of money from Victoria Barracks in Sydney - it's a big parcel of land in Paddington, okay. So if it were just a big oval, a football field, yeah, developers have lapped that up. But there's heritage restrictions all over the shop. So it limits what development - it doesn't stop - but it limits what development could occur.
PATERSON: Correct.
MCLAREN: Are you sharing my skepticism of just how much coin they reckon they're gonna raise if they do sell this?
PATERSON: I have deep skepticism about not just this, but the other sites as well, because some of the other sites are very complex in the remediation they would require before you could build on them. I mean, these have been military bases that had rounds fired on them, the soil's often full of lead or PFAS or other industrial chemicals used as part of normal ADF operations and training, and we always underestimate the cost of remediation. And I think we're also underestimating those heritage overlay concerns as well. These are not just blank sites, as you say, where you can put some apartment towers up with no concerns at all. That really reduces the market value. Ultimately, a property developer has to be able to sell a property, probably a luxury apartment, for a return on investment that more than covers the cost of the land, and if that's constrained by planning or heritage or remediation, then they're going to be able to do much less of it and it's going to raise much less, and really, this was a desktop study.
MCLAREN: Yeah, I agree. Okay. So they're out there. They're saying, oh look we can solve the housing crisis in part with this, and we get lots of, you know, affordable houses - what in Paddington? Have they been there lately? - I don't think it's going to happen. But equally, if it isn't a developer that's going to move in here, I mean, who the heck else is going to stuff up, let's say $400 million for a parcel of land? Who's got that money other than a developer, that can get an ROI?
PATERSON: Exactly right. The only potential buyer who'd be willing to pay the sort of money that the government is hoping to get the market rates, that the government’s hoping to get, is a developer, and the only way they'd be able to get a return on investment is with luxury apartments. That's the only way you could do this, so let's just dispel this myth it's about housing affordability; it's not the case for Victoria Barracks Sydney, nor Victoria Barracks Melbourne, which is very close to the CBD. It's a high-end apartment luxury market...
MCLAREN: …St Kilda, essentially...
PATERSON: Exactly, that's right, St Kilda Road. And so, there's just no way that anyone other than those buyers are going to be willing to pay that money. They're talking in some instances - I was just meeting with the HMAS Penguin community group, very concerned about there - you know, Zali Steggall the local member is proposing social housing. Well social housing is not going to pay the hundreds of millions of dollars that would be required to make this an economic opportunity for the government.
MCLAREN: Okay, now you have the opportunity here from the Opposition's point of view to actually make definitive statement and say, alright, look, we oppose this. That's now Opposition policy, am I right?
PATERSON: So, we're not opposed to every single one of the sites. Of the 67 sites, there are some empty blocks in the back of Townsville that could be very happily developed into housing at no consequence and no cost. So we are going through and assessing them one by one, and there are some which genuinely don't have a modern military use or application. But I'm very skeptical about these high value iconic sites. I'm particularly skeptical about Victoria Barracks, Sydney and Melbourne. I've got more learning to do about other sites around the country and I'm going to be on tour visiting them, assessing them myself, meeting with community groups to understand...
MCLAREN: Well, you're up here in Sydney today, but we can say right here, right now, the Taylor Opposition opposes the sale of Victoria Barracks Sydney.
PATERSON: Correct, we would not sell it if we were in government, and we will fight it. We think it is wrong on so many different levels. And one of the other concerns I have, Michael, is that do we really want to banish the Australian Defence Force from our capital cities? To put the ADF out of sight and out of mind for most Australians as if it is something removed from them and their concerns. I actually think it's a very healthy thing to have the ADF have a visible presence in our cities.
MCLAREN: Well, that's why the American military have, right in the heart of New York City, recruitment offices.
PATERSON: Indeed, indeed. And whether you serve, or whether you don't serve, and whether you have that history in your family or not, you should appreciate that there are other Australians who serve and sacrifice for you. It shouldn't be an abstract concept somewhere off in a regional area away from where you live your daily life.
MCLAREN: And I guess ultimately as a nation you also have to ask, well, what price your history? You know, okay, you can put a value on anything, I guess, in a capitalist society, but what price? That aspect of your history?
PATERSON: No serious country sells off their military heritage. Would the United States contemplate selling West Point?
MCLAREN: The Brits selling Sandhurst...
PATERSON: Never, never. They just wouldn't contemplate something like that, because it's so iconic.
MCLAREN: And yet, we're built in that tradition. Now we've got two minutes just quickly: we've looked at the economics of this, they don't stack up. We've looked at the practicalities of this, they simply don't stack up. We've looked at the history of this. But on the history side tangential to that, is there an ideological issue here with this government and these sorts of sites? They're rooted in our colonial history, our British history, you know where I'm getting to?
PATERSON: I think there is something to that, and I think really the government needs to come out and front up and explain. It's extraordinary to me that no one from the government's willing to come on your programme to discuss this, to defend this. Where is Richard Marles? Where is Pat Conroy? Where's Peter Khalil? Why won't they come on and answer questions from you and your audience about this? And why won't they explain, really, what is the root of this? What is a heart of this? Are they actually opposed to that heritage, that history, that colonial story, which is part of the Australian story. It's part of the Australian tradition and we should be...
MCLAREN: ...We stand on those shoulders...
PATERSON: ...Indeed we do, and if we just take a bean counter's attitude to everything, what heritage and history would we preserve?
MCLAREN: Well, I mean, I would have suggested perhaps we could flog Kiribilli House. The current occupant does have one in Canberra. He's got a nice seaside shack up at Copacabana, I'm told. So why, why preserve that? I mean, the developers would love that, or a Chinese buyer might like that.
PATERSON: Imagine the apartment tower value you could extract out of something like that. That would obviously be absurd, but that's the logic if you followed it all the way through to its logical conclusion. That's where you are.
MCLAREN: Why don't we ship the Governor-General out of Admiralty House and get her a three-bedroom unit at Rose Bay? Nice digs, but you know, you make a lot of money.
PATERSON: Why don't we sell advertising on the side of the Sydney Opera House or the Harbour Bridge, right? That would be offensive to most Australians. They would think that's vulgar. But if you take a bean counter attitude towards the world, towards everything, well then why wouldn't you do things like that?
MCLAREN: Quite right. Exactly. All right. Now you've got a petition of your own. How about you tell people about it?
PATERSON: That's right. So I'm running a national petition against all of these sales across the country. So if you've concerns about a sale in your local area, your local community, head to my website, senatorpaterson.com.au. You'll find a pop-up there that will direct you to where you can sign my petition, and we will use your voice to amplify the arguments in Canberra and get the government to change their mind.
MCLAREN: Senator James Paterson great to meet you in person, thank you for coming up. Senator Paterson, the website senatorpaterson.com.au: sign his petition. Thank you to the nineteen thousand who have signed ours, we are behind the scenes trying to get someone from the Labor establishment to accept it, now I don't think Richard Marles is too keen to come on, but I’m told Peter Khalil may, and we might do that next week.
ENDS