TRANSPORT LEGISLATION AMENDMENT (PORT OF HASTINGS DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY) BILL 2011
16-June-2011
Mr BURGESS (Hastings) -- It is a great pleasure to rise to speak on the Transport Legislation Amendment (Port of Hastings Development Authority) Bill 2011. The purpose of the bill is to promote increased capacity and competition throughout the container port sector of the Victorian economy. To achieve this the bill establishes the Port of Hastings Development Authority. That will be done under the Transport Integration Act 2010. The authority will be tasked with managing and operating the port of Hastings and facilitating the development of the port as a viable alternative, allowing for increased capacity and competition in the port container sector of Victoria's economy.
Before September 2010 the ports of Melbourne and Hastings were overseen by three dedicated government authorities: the Port of Melbourne Corporation, the Victorian Regional Channels Authority and the Port of Hastings Corporation.
The Port of Melbourne Corporation was responsible for the port of Melbourne only, the Victorian Regional Channels Authority was responsible for the port of Hastings waters, though the port of Hastings waters were managed in effect by Patrick Corporation. The port of Hastings was managed through the channel operating agreement and the port of Hastings land was also managed by Patrick through the ports management agreement.
The former Labor government introduced the Transport Legislation Amendment (Ports Integration) Act 2010, the ports integration act. It abolished the Port of Hastings Corporation and transferred responsibility for the port of Hastings, or ownership and control of it, to the Port of Melbourne Corporation, basically putting the Port of Melbourne Corporation in charge of both of Victoria's container ports. The ports integration act had a protracted passage and in fact ended up before the Dispute Resolution Committee. However, after being defeated in the upper house it eventually passed on 12 August 2010.
The reality of the situation was that the Brumby government had gifted the ownership and control of the port of Hastings to the Port of Melbourne Corporation. That was not always the attitude of the former Labor government. In fact Premier Bracks was quite supportive of developing an independent port, and it was only after the elevation of Premier Brumby that that suddenly became a bad idea -- that having an independent competitor to the port of Melbourne became a bad idea. One would have to ask what took place during that transition that meant that all of a sudden, despite the many years and millions of dollars that had been spent looking at Hastings becoming a competitive port in order to add capacity to that area of our economy, it was decided it was not such a good idea anymore.
Decades of experience from around Australia and around the world has shown that competition is the most important factor in developing operational efficiencies, in expanding the efficiency of your economy and in the state's future progress.
It is another Labor policy that really did not look at its intent but rather looked at what it would achieve by doing that. One would have to ask whether it was Labor doing a deal with the unions around the port of Melbourne -- and Labor does have form in this area -- or whether it was just a misunderstanding, that Labor members just did not understand what they were doing and were not able to work out what that would mean to them. As a precursor to this, one could look at the debate that took place in the upper house on the ports integration bill. I think that is fairly instructive. On 22 June 2010 a member for Western Victoria Region in the other place, Ms Tierney, wanted to know why anybody would want one Victorian to compete against another Victorian. What the member was saying in effect was: why would you have the port of Hastings compete against the port of Melbourne? I think that really sums up the whole misunderstanding by the Labor government of what the intention was here and what the port of Hastings was about. What seems to have been the problem for the Labor government was that it did not want to create the competition that would see the port of Hastings thrive. I will come back to that in a moment.
Labor's policy was contrary to common sense and contrary to business principles.
I think outside of this house most members on both sides would say that competition would be better, that it would be an advantage to Victoria's economy to have two container ports that could operate in the best way possible to drive down costs and increase operational efficiencies, but that was not where the Labor government went. As I said, it has been argued that this was done just to appease the unions, but I tend to think, given the results of the previous Labor government in so many other areas, that this was probably just another example of its incompetence.
With container traffic set to quadruple over the next 20 or so years the Labor government had no plan at all to deal with the congestion that was being created. It spent many years and millions of dollars looking at developing the port of Hastings but then at the last minute -- under the former minister, who spoke just before me -- walked away from the plan it had put on the table. As with Labor's massive $38 billion transport plan, nothing ever happened.
The plan was developed, it was put forward as policy and then just left there to sit. The former minister went through the detail of what the port of Hastings is made up of, including that it has three employees. The plan document was about 3 inches thick and every page contained a nasty surprise for the local community down there. I will get to that, because although the Labor government plan might have been a real problem for Victoria's economy, as I have already detailed, it had far more sinister implications for my local community.
I need only refer to the infamous Boral situation in the Crib Point area, where the previous Labor government had before the 2006 state election made a written promise -- --
Dr Napthine interjected.
Mr BURGESS -- Yes, it's coming.
The former government had made a written promise that it would not let a bitumen facility into Crib Point. Following that election the Labor government went out and broke that promise, and the former Minister for Planning and current member for Essendon, who is now in the house, completely ignored the advice given to him by his committee of review and the unanimous advice from the community and its locally elected council. He decided to approve the facility that the then government had promised it would not approve.
One of the problems was that by approving such a plant, the floodgates were opened for other developments, and within a very short period of time there was an attempt to put in a urea plant at Crib Point. We were very quickly going from a community that saw itself as having a wonderfully bright future to a community that was going to be obliterated by industrialisation. As I said, the latest attempt was the urea plant, and that is something the previous government supported.
Obviously one of the other problems is that it would also put B-double trucks on roads that were already overstretched and could not possibly take the impact that was going to be thrust upon them. The former minister was here earlier and confirmed, for the first time as far as I know, that the reason the former government chose to use the local passenger rail line as the port freight rail line, which it denied it was going to do in one forum and then put into its plan anyway, was that it was the cheapest option. The previous government intended to put port freight on an operating passenger rail line without saying to the local community that it intended to do that.
Mr Foley interjected.
Mr BURGESS -- I note the interjection about the environment. The environment is well and truly precious down there.
In some areas it is protected by being designated a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation biosphere reserve, and it is also a declared Ramsar wetland. If this is done in a smart way and developed in a careful way, including consultation with the local community, there is no reason why the environment needs to suffer. Members on the other side of the house are going from their past experiences of how they used to manage things. This is about establishing a local Port of Hastings Development Authority that will be able to do that because it is local. It will be able to make plans because it is local, it will be able to undertake that consultation because it is local and it will be able to come up with plans that will work for the local community as well as for development.
There are three important things that the Port of Hastings Development Authority will establish first. It will conduct social, financial and economic studies. Another point is that the plan for the port of Hastings will be contained to the north of Hastings, so to answer the earlier interjection from the member for Albert Park, that means that there will be no industrialisation south of Hastings, where Crib Point is, and also that freight transport will be maximised and put along Western Port Highway rather than destroying local infrastructure and passenger services that are so vital to my local community.