A federal government plan to divest 15 defence properties in Tasmania has an Aboriginal group seeking land return and veterans warning of regional abandonment.
Defence Minister Richard Marles announced this week that 64 sites nationally would be sold as part of Australia’s largest military property overhaul.
Tasmania will lose all but one defence site outside Hobart, including Derwent Barracks, training areas at Buckland and Stony Head and regional depots in Launceston, Devonport and Burnie.
RSL Tasmania CEO John Hardy said the decision amounted to Canberra “forgetting Tasmania exists”.
“Defence is not trimming the edges in Tasmania. It is withdrawing from every region of the state except the capital,” he said.
Hardy said reservists facing five-hour round trips to train in Hobart would simply stop turning up.
“Attrition will quietly hollow out Tasmania’s defence presence from the inside,” he said.
The Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania has welcomed the announcement for different reasons, calling for Fort Direction to be returned to Palawa traditional owners rather than sold commercially.
The site contains a mutton bird rookery that Palawa have accessed for cultural birding practices for nearly 100 years.
“This is a living cultural landscape,” ALCT chair Greg Brown said.
“Our connection to this place has never been broken.”
Brown said land return would be “one of the most tangible ways governments can address the legacy of dispossession”.
The Tasmanian Greens have called for the sale to be halted until there is proper consultation on public interest uses, including housing and heritage protection.
Marles said proceeds from the sales would be reinvested in Defence priorities, including northern bases.
The Department of Finance will manage the divestments, with heritage and community impacts to be considered.
No timeline has been set for individual site sales.
