Doorstop, Irwin Barracks

SUBJECTS: Army Open Day; Australian Army 125th anniversary; Defence Estate Audit; Defence recruitment; Fuel; Middle East Conflict

MATT KEOGH, MINISTER FOR VETERANS’ AFFAIRS AND DEFENCE PERSONNEL: Well, welcome everybody to Irwin Barracks here in Western Australia for the Open Day as we celebrate the 125th birthday of the Australian Army. And what we see on display here is a great example of our Australian Defence Force capability, but our most important capability is absolutely our Defence people, and our Defence people also rely on their families to support them, and so here with the open day, it is a great opportunity for our Defence community and broader community to come together and see what goes on. Whether you're a Defence family that's just moved to Western Australia for the first time and wanting to connect with our family support services and to understand how Army operates here in Western Australia. Or you could be the family of a reservist and wanting to come and see what mum and dad do here on a Tuesday night or when they're doing their work in our Australian Defence Force, could be someone who lives around the corner wants to get a sticky beak about what goes on behind the wire here, or indeed, someone who wants to come and visit ADF Careers to learn about one of the more than 300 different roles that someone can sign up to participate as a member of our Australian Defence Force. We've got it all on show here today at the Open Day as we celebrate the 125th birthday of Army. And of course, here is the home of the 13th Brigade, our reservist brigade in Western Australia. Our reservists play such an important role in enhancing the capability of our full time Australian Defence Force. We very much rely on that, and it's great to see the show here from 13th Brigade and our other reserve units in Western Australia, what they do and their great capability that they provide to Australia, and particularly here in Western Australia, these are people that have got their other full time careers going on, but they also make that great contribution to our national interest through their participation in the Australian Defence Force. But I think what's really important here as well is the opportunity for people to come and see what our Australian Defence Force does. There's 300 roles that someone can sign up to join our Defence Force to do, whether it's in Army, Navy, Air Force, Space Operations, in Cyber. Of course, we've got our expanded services of submarine force with AUKUS coming on board, whether it's doing the work that someone might do wearing a hoodie in a basement, whether it is being a marine technician, a diesel mechanic, so many different options, and now direct recruitment into space operations as well. All of that is on show here today. And if anyone's interested in joining our Defence Force, get in touch with ADF careers.

JOURNALIST: Just I mean, it's a certain irony, isn't it, that we're here today because, of course, Irwin Barracks and Leeuwin is going to be sold off. Can you just go through the reasoning for that again, why they've been sold?

KEOGH: So when we came into government, we commissioned the Defence Strategic Review, looking at a whole range of strategic issues confronting the Australian Defence Force and our national interest. And a key part a recommendation out of that was to do an audit of the Defence estate. Defence is the biggest holder of land in the Commonwealth, and the request there was to make sure that we were using that defence estate to get the best outcomes for our Australian Defence Force and for our nation. So that audit took some time and gave a very considered and detailed analysis of all of the defence estate across the country, what we needed to maintain and what was now surplus to requirements. And so making sure that we're able to put the best foot forward to support our Defence people and our national interest is critically important. And so when it comes to Irwin Barracks here, where we are, which is currently the home of 13th Brigade, they'll be moving to Palmer Barracks, which is out near Perth airport. And what it'll mean is that our reserve force here in Army in Western Australia will be moving from facilities that are decades and decades old, in fact, close to 100 years old, in some instances, to fit for purpose, new facilities that will better support the modern capability of our Australian Defence Force, and also better connected to major routes of transport, which, as you'll see here, from the trucks and the different equipment, that's really important as well.

JOURNALIST: So what's the timeframe? Minister, like, how? How long before tenders are sorted? Or what can you just explain to me?

KEOGH: So the process from here is the Department of Finance, which is managing the Defence Estate state sale process has got an expression of interest process open now. But of course, the first thing is making sure that where we are relocating forces, like out to Palmer Barracks, we've got to build and establish the facilities that are required there first before we then relocate the units that are going there, and only then do we look at what will happen with disposal at this site. So that will take some time, and we're really engaging with the Defence Force community around that. Once we made the announcement around Defence Estate sales, we've there's been one big whole of Defence Town Hall already. There's been some town halls at a statewide level, and we'll be moving to engagements around each site with personnel and the community in those sites from around June of this year as well.

JOURNALIST: So you're seeking expressions of interest. Have you received any yet?

KEOGH: That process is being managed by Finance, so I'm not across that. 

JOURNALIST: Minister, where are we at with recruitment, you mentioned there were 300 roles that sort of participate in the Defence where are those numbers being at the moment? Are we high, low?

KEOGH: So certainly, when we came into Government, we had a Defence Force recruitment crisis. We saw the Australian Defence Force was shrinking because we weren't recruiting enough people and too many people were leaving the Defence Force. We are now at a historical low when it comes to our separation rates, but importantly also, we are recruiting more people than we have before. Last financial year, we recruited over 7,000 people. That meant that was the biggest recruitment year in 15 years. This year, we are on track to recruit even more than that. So it's great to see that we've got a really strong interest from people wanting to join our Defence Force across those 300 different roles, and we're continuing to improve the throughput of getting people to be able to join our Defence Force even faster. And it's great to see that not only are more people wanting to join, the people in our Defence Force are wanting to stay longer as well. 

JOURNALIST: Has the war had an impact on recruitment models? 

KEOGH: I haven't looked to see what our stats are in just a few weeks, but what we have seen over the course of this year is even more people wanting to join our Defence Force. And I think that's a really great outcome for Australia's national interest. 

JOURNALIST: The world, obviously, is in a conflict. Can I just ask you some questions about fuel. I do understand that’s under Chris Bowen's portfolio, but, you know, it was reported we only really had 36 days of petrol and 32 of diesel, etc. And I think Chris Bowen, has announced that we're breaking open the emergency stockpiles. Have you had a briefing as to, you know, how long can we last before we run out of fuel if this war continues on, you know, for weeks.

KEOGH: So I think the really important thing to realize is that we are not seeing any constraints being imposed on fuel arriving into Australia. The fuel that we would normally expect to arrive has been arriving over this time of this conflict, and is on sea to continue to arrive. So that's really important that we're seeing that, and that people understand that. In terms of our stocks here in Australia, in terms of our reserves, when we came into Government, the previous Liberal National Government's view of holding a reserve was to hold it over in the United States. Well, that's on the other side of the world's biggest ocean. So that wasn't helping anybody. We have built up a larger reserve here in Australia under our Government, and the reserve volume and days worth of fuel is higher now than it was under the previous Government. And that's really important as well. And that's meant that in the context of being able to produce a bit more fuel going through the supply chain because we have seen that uptick in demand. We've been able to do that. And Minister Bowen’s announced that we are releasing some of our reserve into the supply chain here in Australia to take off some of that pressure because of the increase in demand. We've been able to do that because we have built up those higher stock levels over the term.

JOURNALIST: So how long do you know what numbers we've got, the latest estimation?

KEOGH: So we're looking at sort of numbers in the high 30s days, just under 40 days…

JOURNALIST: That we've got in stock... 

KEOGH: That's right in stock, and it differs, obviously, for different fuel types. So we're really that was the numbers just a few days ago. We're now updating that weekly so that people can see those stock levels. They're on the website there. But also that meant that we're able to release some of that now into the supply chain from those reserves to relieve, alleviate some of that pressure people have been seeing through the supply chain because of that uptick in demand, because of the war that we've seen.

JOURNALIST: So what happens if we go beyond 30 days.

KEOGH: Well, as I said, what we're we haven't seen any problem in terms of our fuel deliveries coming into Australia, so we'll be continuing to see fuel delivered into Australia to be meeting that demand as well.

JOURNALIST: WA, of course, we're such a big contributor to the economy. 

KEOGH: Absolutely, 

JOURNALIST: It's important that WA keeps ticking over, so to speak. One of the things is, I've just made a note here aviation fuel, you know, we've got a big map, as you know, FIFO, a big industry. Are you keeping tabs on there any concerns about that?

KEOGH: So, yeah, we report those fuel stocks in terms of petrol, diesel and aviation gas, and we've built up that those stockpiles as well across the country to make sure that we're able to maintain aviation gas stocks. And of course, in Western Australia, that's critically important for supporting our FIFO resources industry, as it's important across the whole country, and we're monitoring all of those issues very closely. And we've seen Minister Chris Bowen giving regular updates about the state of our stockpiles, how many days of fuel we have, and we've also got Minister Madeleine King, Minister for Resources in Japan now engaging with counterparts across Asia to make sure that supply chains are kept moving and that people across our whole region are able to access the fuel that they need. 

JOURNALIST: You worried about price gouging? I know again, that's not your portfolio. But are you worried about that? 

KEOGH: I think the government is worried about price gouging, and it's why we've directed the ACCC to specifically keep a very close watch on what we're seeing, both in terms of petrol stations as well as the supply chain generally, to make sure that fuel companies are not taking advantage of the situation right now to try and gouge more out of people's hip pockets at a time when, yeah, fuel prices are higher than they usually are, and we want to make sure that people are not being ripped off as a consequence. So we've charged the ACCC to make sure that they are monitoring that situation very closely. We have also, we are also going to be moving to increase penalties when it comes to these issues to make sure that people are getting the lowest price possible in the circumstances that we're confronting at the moment. 

JOURNALIST: I think it's been reported today, 2,500 Marines heading to the Middle East. President Trump has announced that if this were ever to be a long, a longer term war, and the US asked Australia to have troops on the ground in the Middle East. Could we say yes?

KEOGH: Well, Joe, I'm not going to deal with hypotheticals. Obviously, we've announced that we've responded to a request from the UAE to provide an E7A Wedgetail in terms of a reconnaissance aircraft to support their defensive effort against what they've been confronting in the Middle East, in terms of attacks from Iran, and Australia, has over 100,000 Australians in the region, as well as Defence Force members that operate out of our main Middle East base there in Dubai. So we've provided that defensive assistance in terms of the Wedgetail and as well as some air to air missile capability for the UAE, from a defensive only point of view, but I'm not going to deal with hypotheticals about how this conflict may evolve.

ENDS