It is great to see Pruners exercising their commonsense and thinking outside the box. Unfortunately I very much doubt that anything like that is happening elsewhere.
I have "heard" that far from contemplating leaving, the RAAF has laid acres more of concrete and built a new Control tower at Darwin - this does not sound like an organisation about to build a new base. It's more likely that the US marines will build such a base as the tempo of their pivot to Asia increases.
There is a very interesting document available on the web at <http://www.dica.org.au/wp-content/uploads/AFBaseAccessReview.pdf> that warns the RAAF about allowing access to RAAF airfields. Amongst other things it states
"Defence capability is inextricably linked to the availability of its airfields for training and, if necessary, the conduct of operations. Air Force airfields exist to support the generation, sustainment and deployment of military capability to meet Defence tasking by the Australian Government. Military use shall always have primacy at these locations. Accordingly, military activities may affect or even preclude civil aviation at Air Force airfields"
It also mentions that Darwin and Townsville work because they do not have permanent squadrons in place, and are only used for exercises and deployment. So why are they not civil aerodromes that can support military execises when needed, as is the case at Rockhampton? (There the civil controllers are quite used to handling all sorts of military aircraft, are augmented by RAAF ATCs when required and even host radar units run by the US Marine Corps from time to time.) I believe the answer lies in an ambition by the RAAF ATC wing to be the world's answer to setting up an ATC unit when needed. This was done in Baghdad and I believe offered in other places. In order to provide this they need to train their controllers to operate in civilian environments, this they do in Darwin, Townsville and Williamstown. I think that Dr Dre's comments above sum that up. So expect the RAAF to hang on to Darwin and Townsville solely to provide ATC training.