The NSW expanded Port Botany with the construction of a third terminal. Before taking this decision in 2005 it established a Commission of Inquiry. Commissioner Cleland recommended against a third terminal because of the environmental impacts and proximity to Sydney Airport. The Commissioner recognised that Sydney Ports could achieve a total of 3.2 million containers a year on two terminals, with some minor expansions to each. Sydney Ports argued they needed the additional terminal to achieve 3.2 million. In approving the third terminal the Planning Minister, then Frank Sartor, confirmed the 3.2 million cap on the Port. But in a later IPART Review of the Port’s Road and Rail interface the capacity of the port was referred to as 3.9million TEU. In the Government’s submission to the current Federal Government’s National Port Strategy a figure of 5.8million TEU is quoted as projected for 2029/30. Ex-Patrick CEO, Chris Corrigan, and ex-P&O (now DP World) CEO Tim Blood appeared at the Commission of Inquiry. They both said that the port was capable of exceeding 5 million without the construction of a third terminal. The constraint to achieving higher capacity they argued was the road/rail interface. Hutchison (largest stevedore in the world) signed a 30 years lease on the 3rd terminal in the week before Christmas 2009. The current throughput at the Port is 2 million TEU annually. Port of Melbourne is the largest container port in Australia. It is planning for over 7 million containers by 2035. Port Phillip Bay is 26 times larger than Botany Bay and Melbourne’s airport is the other side of the city. In Melbourne there are plans for intensifying warehousing around the Port and upgrading road and rail links to intermodal terminals see link. It is highly likely that to compete with Melbourne similar proposals are being made for Port Botany. A new planning instrument (SEPP – State Environmental Planning Policy) was introduced last year. The Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park – the largest in Southern/Eastern Sydney – is bounded by the Port SEPP lands and already a proposal has been made to allow B Doubles (capable of pulling 60 feet of containers) to compete with funeral corteges as well as users of adjoining tourist/recreational areas such as Prince of Wales drive and Bicentennial Park, Yarra Bay. Land owned by industrials, such as Orica, is now proposed for warehouseing (eg. 18ha Southlands site in Banksmeadow). The biggest problem at Port Botany, as identified by Tim Blood, Chris Corrigan, David Marchant (Head of the ARTC) and countless others has been the road/rail interface. The Port is only 10km from the centre of Australia’s oldest and largest city. It made no sense to keep expanding here because the roads and rail can’t be expanded to adequately support a port needed to compete with Brisbane and Melbourne. In his report Commissioner Cleland said that Botany could not be expanded to compete with Melbourne and Brisbane, but he was overruled by the newly installed Iemma Government.(Commissioner Cleland submitted his report in May 2005 to then Planning Minister Craig Knowles. In July and August, Premier Bob Carr, Deputy Premier and Treasurer Andrew Refshauge, and Knowles all resigned. Morris Iemma became Premier, Michael Costa, Treasurer and Frank Sartor, Planning Minister, with Sartor then approving the expansion on 13 October 2005). Rail is not the silver bullet. Trains need to be able to double stack containers to compete and this is not possible along the Botany line because of the number of overbridges. Also the rail corridor is located in some of the most densely populated suburbs in Australia – as you would expect this is Inner Sydney. The noise, vibrations, and poorer air quality which result from 24/7 rail operations do and will further impact the health of surrounding communities. The studies were never done, but it is likely that the costs to upgrades of roads and the creation of new tunnels is far higher than it would have been to shift the container operations to Port Kembla and provide the supporting infrastructure in low population density areas. Intermodal hubs could have been developed in the Southern Highlands region through to Campbelltown. At a joint Ports seminar in 2003, the then CEO of Port Kembla demonstrated how his port could more efficiently service the consumer needs of Sydney as well as the rest of the state. The motor vehicle trade that was shifted from the Harbour to Kembla would have been better left within the Sydney region and could have replaced container trade at Botany.
Posted on: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 03:14:31 +0000
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