Carr tries forcing Port Botany expansion

by Peter Mac

On January 28 the NSW Carr Labor Government released the 
Environmental Impact Statement into expanding the Port Botany 
container terminal, leaving just two days for public submissions 
to a parliamentary inquiry into the proposal.

The proposal has major implications for Botany Bay. Like the 
horrific proposal to establish a waste handling facility at 
Auburn, the Port Botany plan has been fully backed by the Carr 
Government, despite objections from local residents, councils and 
environmental groups.

The plan involves reclaiming 60 hectares of Botany Bay, to 
provide five new berths and container areas between the existing 
terminal and Sydney Airport's parallel runways.

The massive additional facilities would generate significantly 
more noise, and major traffic problems. Docking in the berths 
would be hazardous because of the runways' close proximity.

A new parking facility would bisect the last original beach 
between the runways and the terminal. The beach's south-east end 
would become a short, stagnant canal, with the beach remnant on 
one side and the new container facilities on the other. Migratory 
birds that have nested there since time immemorial would probably 
be forced out by the expanded terminal operations — and who in 
their right mind would want to swim there?

The entire original beach would be adversely affected by loss of 
tidal flow. As "compensation", improvements would be made to the 
beach's north-west end, but these should have been made anyway, 
for the public benefit. Like the Howard Government, the Carr 
Government is making environmental improvement dependent on 
public acceptance of particularly nasty government proposals.

It has been suggested that Botany Bay should be entered on the 
World Heritage List. Glowing reports by botanist Sir Joseph Banks 
regarding the area's flora and fauna were the crucial factor in 
the British Government's decision to establish a penal colony in 
NSW in 1788, rather than at two alternative sites in Africa.

Botany Bay therefore has a unique significance in Australia's 
40,000 year-long history of human occupation, because of its key 
role in the occupation of the continent by Europeans, which in 
turn led to the development of Australia as a modern industrial 
capitalist state.

In a striking way, the Bay has come to epitomise the problems 
this development has entailed. And nowhere are these problems 
more evident than in the conflicting interests of industrial 
capital versus local residents, workers and concerned citizens, 
over conservation of the area's natural and cultural values.

The Bay's eastern side now hosts Australia's busiest airport, 
alongside major petrochemical storage and cargo handling 
facilities — a catastrophe waiting to happen. On the western 
side are residential suburbs, the Kurnell oil refinery and the 
relatively untouched natural areas, which harbour unique species 
of wildlife, including many noted by Banks. Further industrial 
expansion will inevitably encroach on the non-industrial areas 
and destroy their unique values, as well as ruining the bay 
itself.

Successive governments have failed to take action to relocate the 
airport and industrial facilities, despite the terrible hazard 
that both constitute, as exemplified by explosions at Melbourne's 
Coode Island refinery and the Port Kembla ethanol storage depot.

Greens MP Lee Rhiannon condemned the impossible deadline for 
public submissions to the inquiry. She commented: "The Greens 
will be fighting (the Port Botany expansion) in conjunction with 
supporting Port Kembla and Newcastle ports.

"Filling in 60 hectares of Port Botany is early twentieth century 
engineering that has enormous social and environmental 
implications for Sydney residents.

"Sydney streets can't cope with the traffic that this proposal 
would create. The community must be allowed to fully participate 
in the Inquiry process and the Greens will be calling for the 
deadline to be extended accordingly."