STATEMENTS BY MEMBERS

Ms McKENZIE (Flinders) (16:18): For more than a century, HMAS Cerberus has been the cradle of the Navy, the place where generations of Australians sailors have begun their careers in the service of our nation. Cerberus sits on the Westernport Bay in my electorate of Flinders. It's a base of more than 1,500 hectares and, each and every year, trains around 6,000 Navy, Army and Air Force personnel.

It runs a recruit school alongside the Defence Force School of Signals, the School of Survivability and Ship Safety and the Physical Training Instructor School. Last week, the shadow minister for defence, Senator James Paterson, visited the base with me and saw for himself the vital role that this base plays in the operations of day-to-day military training. But in February of this year, the Albanese Labor government announced that 1,164 of those 1,500 hectares would be partially divested, or sold off, as part of a $2 billion fire sale of some 35,000 hectares of Commonwealth defence land.

My community did not stay quiet. More than 400 people packed into Crib Point Primary School in June for a consultation session, and not one hand went up in support of a sale. I launched a petition calling on the government to stop this sell off, and I will keep fighting it, because Cerberus is not real estate to be traded off to plug a budget hole.

It is the training ground of our future Navy, Army and Air Force at a time when our region needs them more than ever.