Ammunition for a M777 155mm lightweight towed howitzer from 107 Battery 4th Regiment is seen in Townsville, Australia on June 28, 2026. Ian Hitchcock/Getty Images
The private guards who control access to Australia’s Defence bases are unarmed, can only search people who agree to it, and have no power to deal with drones flying overhead, a Senate committee has heard.
Lee-Anne Monterosso, the First Assistant Secretary for Service Delivery for the Defence Department, revealed on Oct. 22 that guards could only stop and question, or call police, but do not have the power to search anyone without consent.
The guards are supplied by contractors including Wilson Security, which the department confirmed is owned by the Kwok family of Hong Kong through the Wilson Group, as well as the Hong Kong-listed Sun Hung Kai Properties (pdf).
Asked by the chair of the Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade References Committee, Liberal Senator Jessica Collins, whether a guard who found an armed intruder could call on an army combat unit to open the armoury, Monterosso said she would have to take the question on notice.
She said guards could detect and report drones, but bringing one down was “a law enforcement power,” with responsibility sitting with the vice chief of the Defence Force.
Collins also spoke of an alleged unlawful entry to RAAF Base Darwin on Sept. 15, which is still being investigated, and U.S. testing of Australian base security reported earlier this month.
Monterosso said Defence knew about the U.S. testing and was involved, and that it was not “a covert sort of exercise.”
While security firms often disciplined individual guards who failed in their duties, she said Defence had not cut payments to the firms over any of the incidents.
Acting Deputy Secretary for Security Peter West said base security was reviewed every year and after any incident, but that it would harm Defence to discuss any weaknesses that had been found.
Foreign Buyers Not Ruled Out from Buying Defence Sites
Liberal Senator Leah Blyth then asked whether anything would stop a foreign company from buying part of a defence asset in Labor’s current sell-off.
West said several of the partial sales involved sensitive sites, such as HMAS Penguin in Sydney, and that any foreign bid would be checked through the foreign investment review process.
But when pressed on whether anything ruled out a foreign buyer, he said that because the Department of Finance runs the sales and their contracts, he could not speak to that.
“But the Department of Finance isn’t going to be necessarily looking for security concerns. For them, it’s just a commercial contract,” Blyth said.
West said Defence had raised security concerns about particular sites with Finance, which would consult Defence on any security issues during the sales.
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