15 June 2011
Mr MORRIS (Mornington) — It has been fascinating to sit here and listen to the member for Williamstown lecture this government about the importance of meeting our targets. All I can say is that considering the last 11 years of missed deadlines, failed projects and massive cost blow‑outs the member simply cannot have been paying attention.
The port of Hastings is a magnificent natural deepwater harbour. It is a fantastic asset for the state of Victoria, but more than that it is critical to the future economic sustainability of this state. It is very important that we capitalise on that asset, but it is important that we do so in a manner which is consistent with the very sensitive environment that undoubtedly exists in Western Port.
I have had a long association with the planning of Western Port, both the port and the broader environment. I spent some five and a half years, as a member of the Westernport Regional Planning and Coordination Committee, the body that was concerned with the planning of the wider region that in those days included the whole of the Mornington Peninsula and West Gippsland as far as Wonthaggi.
We were also very active with specific measures relating to the bay area itself, including the Western Port‑based strategy; the port land‑use plan that is still largely valid today, although it has been amended, but in terms of the focus of activity to the north of Hastings Bight that plan is still in place; a coastal villages strategy that introduced the concept — I think it was the first in Victoria — of putting reasonable boundaries around coastal villages and stopping the inappropriate spread of urban development along our coasts; and also a review of statement of planning policy 1 as amended. I say ‘as amended’ because the original statement of planning policy 1 was the plan that proposed the heavy industrialisation of Western Port and that stood for some period in the 1960s, but it was reviewed in the 1970s and changed very substantially.
Following the dissolution of that committee I chaired a review of the Western Port‑based strategy for the abutting councils around the bay, and in a private capacity I acted as the chair for the Shell‑Mobil consortium when it proposed to reintroduce cadmium‑rich crude oil imports into Western Port. I worked with the community on the oversight of the preparation of the oil‑spill response plan, and that was a fascinating experience. I learnt a lot of things about oil spills, and I am very glad that we did not have cadmium‑rich crude oil imports reintroduced in Western Port.
The history of the proposals, in a legislative sense, goes back much further to the Westernport (Oil Refinery) Act 1963, which provided the framework for the original BP refinery, but modern expectations are very different and we now have the opportunity to develop the port in a manner that is sensitive to the environment. That is a very important part of the discussion. In particular we also have the opportunity to develop the port in a manner consistent with 21st‑century objectives, our requirements and the requirements of a 21st‑century local economy.
At the heart of this discussion is the divergence between the parties, and it seems to be almost a historic divergence now, about how the port is best managed. The former government took the view that the port was best managed centrally and that we needed to maintain a monopoly for the port of Melbourne, and as a consequence of that approach the port of Hastings was managed in a manner that suited the interests of port Melbourne, but it certainly did not suit the interests of the port of Hastings or the community of Hastings, and nor indeed did it suit the best interests of wider Victoria.
If I had been a member of the board of the port of Melbourne I certainly would have acted that way. Its responsibility was to act on behalf of the organisation, not the community, so in my view the policy settings were wrong, and certainly this government does not share the views of the former government in any way at all.
It is also worth recalling the manner in which the current act was forced through. The former government’s legislation was rejected by the upper house. It was only passed when it was forced through by a resolution of the very undemocratic Dispute Resolution Committee, and whenever members opposite rail about the sanctity of our democratic institutions and the imagined dreadful wrongs that this government is inflicting on the democratic process in this state, I urge those opposition members not to forget that they were the ones who took the wrecking bar to our state’s constitution. They are the ones who removed the rights of the Legislative Council to consider and reject legislation like this. They are the ones who used that mechanism to force through this legislation. Labor forced those changes through, but thankfully we have the opportunity to reverse them before any permanent damage is done.
We have the opportunity in Hastings to build a port for the future. The port of Hastings and indeed the whole of Western Port is, as I said earlier, an extremely environmentally sensitive area. In the 1970s the landmark Shapiro report was done. It provided baseline data — very effective benchmark data against which to consider proposals.
Much of the work that has been done since — and there has been an extensive body of work done since — goes back to the Shapiro report.
One of the problems with the status of Hastings as a subsidiary port to the port of Melbourne is that it is often seen as suitable for noxious trades — the sorts of trades that are not welcome at all in Melbourne. You only have to look at the history of the port to see both the sorts of activities that have been undertaken there and also the determination not so long ago of the former government to impose a bitumen plant on the community of Crib Point. That is an entirely unsuitable use, particularly in that locality, and it is precisely the sort of trade that is not warranted in Western Port. That is a great asset. We need to make the best use of it, and the best use is not the sort of trade that is simply rejected by the port of Melbourne.
The new authority that is created by this legislation, the Port of Hastings Development Authority, will have the capacity to build a world‑class facility in concert with the community. It will have the opportunity to build a port which is able to play a significant role not in noxious trades but in the container trade. Without action we are at very real risk of exhausting existing capacity in the container trade. Many other speakers have commented on this. By 2035 we are projecting volume of 8 million 20‑foot equivalent units annually, an increase of 400 per cent on the 2008–09 levels.
I want to touch on an argument often mounted against channel deepening, and that is the myth that we are a nation of importers and that we would have been better served investing in local industry. Local industry is clearly very important, but so is the role of trade in our economy — and as you certainly know, Acting Speaker, the dairy industry is not only the largest agricultural employer in Victoria but is also the largest single exporter through the port of Melbourne. The continued health of our container trade is vital to the continued health of the state economy.
I want to contrast the decisive action of the Baillieu government with the dithering of the Bracks government, which had the opportunity in 1999 to implement the findings of the Victorian ports strategic study. For two years that study sat on the shelf gathering dust, then for two years it was sent out for consultation even though extensive consultation had already been done. If that dithering had not occurred, we would not have seen the jackboot approach that was taken to the channel‑deepening project. Worthy as that was as a project, the tactics used to carry it out were not. They were completely unnecessary. If we had not had the dithering in the first couple of years of the Bracks government, we would not have had the problem five or six years later.
I say to those opposite that no matter how they try to reinvent the past the fact of the indecision, the muddle, the policy paralysis of 1999 and beyond remains.
I welcome this legislation, and I commend the bill to the house.
Legislative Assembly 15 June 2011
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