The Fleet Base East is a Royal Australian Navy (RAN) major fleet base that comprises several naval establishments and facilities clustered around Sydney Harbour, centred on HMAS Kuttabul. The Fleet Base East extends beyond the borders of Kuttabul and includes the commercially-operated dockyard at , and adjacent wharf facilities at nearby Woolloomooloo, east of the Sydney central business district in New South Wales, Australia. Fleet Base East is one of two major facilities of the RAN, the other facility being the Fleet Base West. The fleet operates in the Pacific Ocean. Confusingly, naval personnel often use the term Fleet Base East to mean the naval wharves at Garden Island where ships assigned to the Fleet Base usually berth but the official designation includes several other bases and facilities as well. History Sydney was considered the centre of naval activity in Australia from the arrival of Europeans in 1788. Over the course of the 19th century the Royal Navy developed facilities around Sydney Harbour, most notably at Garden Island. Those facilities passed to the newly formed Royal Australian Navy in 1911 and Sydney became home port to the Australian Fleet. During World War II there was significant expansion of the naval facilities around Sydney Harbour, including a large expansion of the dockyards at Garden Island. After World War II, Australia began to have growing interests in the Indian Ocean areas to the west of Australia and the need for a major base on the west coast of the continent was identified. This resulted in the eventual construction during the 1970s of HMAS Stirling, near Perth in Western Australia. In 1987 the decision was taken to permanently split the basing of the Australian Fleet. The collection of facilities and bases on Sydney Harbour was designated Fleet Base East while Stirling was designated Fleet Base West. Thales Australia has successfully operated at the Garden Island dockyards since the early 1980s and in 2014 signed a further five-year contract with the Department of Defence to provide ongoing dock operations and services, as well as ship repair and maintenance services at Garden Island. During the 2013 federal election campaign, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd proposed that under a Labor government, the Sydney-based facilities of Fleet Base East would be relocated further north, with options of Queensland and the Northern Territory suggested. However, by 2017 and following the release of the 2016 Defence White Paper, a 213