Australian government defends barracks sale reversal, renewable push amid rising power costs
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Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles tried to justify keeping Victoria Barracks in public hands, while Housing Minister Clare O’Neil touted the budget’s housing measures and the government’s costly renewable agenda even as electricity prices rise.
Deputy Prime Minister and defence minister Richard Marles declined to explain in detail how the decision was reached to keep Sydney’s 180-year-old Victoria Barracks under public ownership, but said the site will be transferred to the Department of Finance. He told News24 that spending “hundreds of millions of dollars on sites … we’re not using is just not tenable” and argued the Defence Estate audit highlighted long-standing management problems that have been allowed to fester.
At the national Remembrance Day ceremony at the Australian War Memorial, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Governor-General Sam Mostyn and other officials laid wreaths and commemorated the centenary of the memorial’s opening. The Prime Minister also marked the occasion in Singapore, laying a wreath at the Changi Chapel and Museum and praising the courage of Australian prisoners of war.
Housing Minister Clare O’Neil defended the May budget, saying data show an increase in lending to first-home buyers and a shift of investors toward new dwellings. She told Sunrise that the government’s “unapologetic focus” is to get more Australians into home ownership.
Labor’s renewable-energy rollout was criticised by Nationals deputy leader Bridget McKenzie, who warned that wholesale electricity prices could double as coal plants close faster than new renewable capacity is connected. O’Neil responded that the shift to renewables is necessary to lower household energy costs and that aging coal plants are “very expensive to run,” even as families face mounting pressure from the energy transition.
In a separate development, Deputy Prime Minister Marles learned that his great-uncle, Lieutenant Andrew Anderson, was among the 11 World War I soldiers recently identified by the federal government. Marles described the discovery as a “remarkably personal revelation.”
Parliamentary members attending the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China in The Hague called for a review of Australia’s reliance on Chinese goods, with Senator Deborah O’Neill and MP Cassandra Fernando urging broader discussion of China’s role in the Indo-Pacific region.