ICARUS
Partly right - ex RAAF, and now with many more years out of the service than I was in. As 'GB' rightly points out, the RAAF have been training at Pearce since long before airspace usage was ever an issue. 'GB' makes a good point re joint user aerodromes and this apparently works pretty well at Darwin and Townsville, but I doubt that extensive ab-initio civil training at Williamtown, in the likes of Cessnas & Pipers would be either safe or practical. The same applies at Pearce where you would have low experience military pilots, flying high performance pseudo fighter type acft mixing it with similarly inexperienced civil students in their much slower training machines - may I suggest that it would be a bit like running a bicycle road race on the Mount Panorama track while the V8 Super Cars were also doing their thing. Not only different performance and vehicles, but also different rules of operation. As far as Richmond is concerned, it is not a true 'joint user' aerodrome as the only civil training permitted is ILS approaches. These require prior approval and be followed by a missed approach. Circuit training by civil aircraft is not permitted, except by the base's own aero club at weekends and in periods of reduced military activity.
Military airspace is not, by the way, sacrosanct! It is continually under review by a number of agencies, one being the RACS Committee which comprises of airspace experts from RAN, Army, RAAF, CASA and Airservices Australia.