Government comes under fire during bizarre and heated exchange over changing lightbulbs

The Labor Government came under fire this week for its defence handling during a heated and bizarre exchange over lightbulbs.

During an inquiry on Wednesday into the management of defence estate assets, Liberal Senator Jess Collins interrogated the government over its procedure around changing a light bulb on an army base.

“If I’m a combat engineer on a base and a light bulb goes, what do I do?” the Senator and chair of the inquiry asked.

In response, first assistant secretary for the department of defence Ms Lee-anne Mounterosso said: “You would log a job on Service Connect, which is an app that we have or on the defence intranet.”

Doubling down, Ms Collins questioned further why it wasn’t possible for the activity to be carried out by an engineer on base.

“Somebody would come out and change your light bulb for you. Somebody on base?” she continued.

“Yes. They might not be permanently based on the base. They might service a range of other sites but yes somebody on base would come and change the light bulb,” Ms Mounterosso replied.

“Why can’t I change it myself? If I am a combat engineer, why can’t I change a light bulb myself? Why do I have to go through that process?

Wading into the exchange, the deputy secretary of defence security and estate Ms Celia Perkins said: “Well where would they buy the light bulb from? Where would they store the light bulb?”

Appearing visibly puzzled, the Senator proceeded to question what the cost behind such an operation would be.

“How much does it cost to change a lightbulb?” Ms Collins enquired.

Following a sustained period of silence, the deputy secretary replied: “I couldn’t tell you. We don’t price individual activities down to that level of detail.”

The nation’s current defence spending for the 2026-27 financial year is is $62.6 billion, which equates to approximately $181.9 million a day.

The Senator then went on to acknowledge the strange subject area the inquiry had gone down.

Ms Collins said: “I know you’re looking at me like this is a ridiculous line of questioning, but we’re trying to understand the maintenance program on these bases.”

“The whole part of the rationale for selling somewhere like Victoria Barracks Sydney, the heart and soul of the army, is because things like changing a light bulb costs too much,” she continued.

“Combat engineers can blow up bridges, go behind insurgent lines, but he can’t change his own light bulb.

“That’s what we’re trying to understand. We have apprentices on bases, wages already paid for by the defence force, and we can’t use them,” she concluded.

The exchange was uploaded onto the Senator’s social media and was captioned: “This Labor government is selling off our defence bases because they don’t understand basic financial management. We need some common sense in defence base management.”

The video, which has since been viewed more than a million times and garnered more than 60,000 likes, has seen people wade in on the conversation surrounding Labor’s handling of defence assets.

One person wrote: “This was enjoyable to watch” while another said, “no commonsense or reasoning”.

Others commented: “Do they realise how ridiculous this sounds to the average person?” and “ridiculous process that adds to considerable costs to taxpayers - common sense has been thrown out the window”.