Fremantle Port privatisation rests on timeline for outer harbour, Colin Barnett says

source: abc news

Fremantle Port privatisation rests on timeline for outer harbour, Colin Barnett says

West Australian Premier Colin Barnett wants the construction timeline for an outer harbour containment port off Perth determined before Fremantle Port is privatised to avoid the prospect of later compensation.

The port is part of a broader asset sales program the Government hopes will raise between $3 billion and $5 billion as it looks to reduce the state's climbing debt.

The Government has flagged privatisation of Fremantle Port on a long-term lease arrangement, but Mr Barnett said there was still "a long way to go" before any move goes ahead.

"A prospective buyer needs to know exactly the timetable in terms of container capacity at Fremantle and the timetable and capacity of a new container port," he said.

"Giving certainty to a bidder is fundamental to the sale of the port.

"I'm not one to hypothecate compensation, I would rather deal with the issue so there is not a question of compensation."

Mr Barnett made the comments in response to questions in State Parliament on whether the Government would consider compensating the potential future lessee of Fremantle Port, if a rival container facility is developed in Kwinana.

The comments also follow concerns raised by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission about the Port of Melbourne's sale.

One of the competition watchdog's concerns centred on the Victorian Government creating a system to compensate the operator if the state builds a rival port ahead of schedule.

Mr Barnett said other issues also needed to be worked through before any deal regarding Fremantle could go ahead.

"Some of the issues include the ultimate capacity ... in terms of containers. It will also be affected by what happens in terms of freight connections to the port and to the Roe Highway system," he said.

"It will also be determined as to whether any prospective buyer has a right or first entitlement to be involved in the expansion of a container port at Cockburn Sound, and add to that a whole range of detailed issues as to exactly what is being sold in terms of land and assets on that.

"This project has got a long way to go and we are concentrating on the sale of the first identified asset, which is the Perth Market Authority, and the second one which is [port facility] Utah Point in Port Hedland."

If the Government does decide to put the facility under private control, it is expected to be in the form of a 50-year lease.

posted originally by the ABC HERE

Health fears over freight link fumes

source: the west australian

Health fears over freight link fumes

Parents with children, politicians, environmentalists and residents in dust masks joined yesterday to put faces to the campaign against the Perth Freight Link.

About 1000 protesters worried about everything from diesel fumes to poor planning gathered on Stirling Bridge in East Fremantle to show the growing opposition to the $1.6 billion State Government project.

Federal MP Alannah MacTiernan, who wants the heavy transport route scrapped, said the “crazy” project was hastily conceived, poorly thought out and would not “bring home the economic bacon”.

Labor would allocate $2 million to plan an outer harbour at Kwinana if it won the next Federal election.

Transport Minister Dean Nalder said the project was well-planned and environmentally responsible.

He said he was focused on the Roe 8 highway extension and the Government did what it could to minimise the environmental impacts of the “critical” project.

“We understand there are concerns whenever we do something that impacts on natural vegetation,” he said. “We need to make sure we’ve looked at it carefully.

“I’m comfortable that the process has been done properly and we’re doing the right thing.”

Public health physician Linda Selvey, an associate professor at Curtin University, said the link would ruin East Fremantle.

She said it would increase diesel particulates, traffic crashes and noise pollution while destroying green space and connectivity.

Those most affected would be children, the elderly and people with lung problems.

An application for a judicial review of the environmental approval of Roe 8 was filed in the Supreme Court last week.

Community to Challenge Roe 8 Highway environmental approval in Supreme Court

source: community council of wa

Roe8 highway environmental approval in Supreme Court - See more at: http://ccwa.org.au/media/community-challenge-roe8-highway-environmental-approval-supreme-court#sthash.b4gVKOEh.dpuf

Community to challenge Roe8 highway environmental approval in Supreme Court

The Save Beeliar Wetlands Community group has today lodged an application with the WA Supreme Court seeking judicial review of the environmental approval for the proposed Roe Highway extension, the first section of the controversial Perth Freight Link.
This legal action is the latest setback for the project which stretches from Kwinana Fwy to Marmion St in East Fremantle. The Barnett Government has previously claimed that the assessments on Roe 8 were all but completed and the project was ‘shovel ready’. WA Minister for the Environmental Albert Jacob announced the state environmental approval on Roe 8 in July 2015 however Commonwealth environmental approval for the project is still pending.

Documents lodged with the Supreme Court by the Environmental Defenders Office on behalf of SBW and an affected landholder seek to rule out the Environmental Protection Authority’s recommendation for approval for the project.

Save Beeliar Wetlands Chair Kate Kelly said “The EPA has not carried out its central purpose on Roe 8 which is to protect the environment. It has been left to the community and groups like ours to hold Main Roads and the Government to account over this destructive proposal.”

“We have attempted many times to raise issues with the EPA through our submissions, meetings and our appeals. This legal action is one of our last options to hold the EPA and the State Government to account over its poor decisions and processes.”

“The Save Beeliar Wetlands campaign group has consistently indicated that there were issues with the environmental assessment on Roe 8 and the group is committed to enacting every legal means of stopping this ill considered and unnecessary road”

“There is evidence that there has been conflicts of interests at the EPA board level. There are also serious issues with the provision of offsets and the lack of review of alternatives to this project.”
Conservation Council Director Piers Verstegen said “If it were to go ahead, the Roe Highway proposal will do immeasurable damage to one of the most important environmental and cultural sites in the metropolitan area.”

“Thousands of Western Australians including scientists, transport experts, lawyers and Traditional Owners have conclusively shown that the Roe 8 project is a very bad idea, yet the State Government have allowed a flawed assessment process to ignore those concerns.

 “The decision-making process for this project has been deeply flawed from the very beginning and once again it has come down to the community to hold government to account and to protect our environment.

“This legal challenge seeks to uphold and restore EPA’s function to protect the environment, rather than acting as rubber stamp for the governments ill-conceived, unpopular and environmentally destructive projects.”

the article can be read HERE

Link soon redundant, say locals

source: community news

Link soon redundant, say locals

COTTESLOE residents have been told the proposed $1.6 billion Perth Freight Link (PFL) that may send more trucks through their town would be redundant soon after its proposed 2019 finish.

“The date of completion of the PFL is only 24 months before the Fremantle inner harbour reaches its capacity in 2021,” Cottesloe Residents and Ratepayers Association chair John Hammond said.

A summary of the Federal Government’s PFL business case estimates the port will handle about 1.1 million containers that year.

Last Tuesday, about 270 residents at a Cottesloe Civic Centre PFL meeting were told a 13km toll clearway of up to six lanes was proposed for trucks from Bibra Lake to East Fremantle, contracts were to be signed by December, but it was unknown how to get the PFL a further 3km to the port, costing a mooted $900 million.

Concerns include trucks using Cottesloe to avoid the PFL’s toll, pollution, and pressure to widen Curtin Avenue and Stirling Highway for a long-mooted coastal highway.

Since the mid-1990s, Liberal and Labor State governments have planned trucks using the Latitude 32 transfer yard near a new Kwinana port but the PFL, untested by Infrastructure Australia, was announced after the State Government got $925 million from Canberra last year.

Curtin University sustainability professor Peter Newman said Premier Colin Barnett was PFL opponents’ “only real hope” because State Cabinet was split over the project and Mr Barnett said recently the route may not get built in North Fremantle if there was no “elegant solution”.

The State Opposition has been blamed for the PFL conundrum by removing land for the Fremantle Eastern Bypass for port trucks, but Opposition leader Mark McGowan told the Western Suburbs Weekly the bypass was not needed after Kwinana port tenders started in 2007.

Mr McGowan said a Kwinana port costing a mooted $4 billion and a claimed $2.5 billion bill for a revised Metronet public transport plan could be afforded because they were a “tiny” part of future infrastructure spending.

“I think there’s hasn’t been real effort to work with the Commonwealth on a funding option for rail and a new port in Kwinana, and there should have been far more effort gone to work with the Commonwealth in terms of getting Federal assistance,” he said.

There will be a PFL rally at Stirling Bridge, 10am this Sunday.

Read the original story HERE from Community News

Former WA premier Carmen Lawrence attacks Perth Freight Link plans

source: abc news

Former WA premier Carmen Lawrence attacks
Perth Freight Link plans

Former WA Labor premier Carmen Lawrence has launched a scathing attack on the proposed Perth Freight Link, labelling the State Government "pig-headed" and the Environmental Protection Authority "weak".

Dr Lawrence is now a professor of psychology at the University of Western Australia, and rarely makes political comment.

The North Fremantle resident said the stage one Roe 8 component of the $1.6 billion Perth Freight Link was an "absolutely ridiculous idea" that was shelved by several previous governments for good reason.

"God knows why they've chosen to put it back on the agenda and to spend the best part of $2 billion on part of a road that in the end goes nowhere, it gets stuck at the Stirling Bridge ... It's wrong headed and pig-headed," she said.

The Barnett Government has committed to the completion of Roe 8 through the Beeliar Wetlands by extending the Roe Highway from Kwinana Freeway to Stock Road, with contracts expected to be awarded in the coming months.

The second stage, known as Roe 9, would link Roe Highway to the Fremantle Port by an as-yet undetermined route.

Dr Lawrence said the business case for the freight link project was incomplete and did not fully take into account social impacts.

"We don't know what these other effects will be let alone on the sense of human wellbeing and community, and big roads like that drive a wedge right between communities," Dr Lawrence said.

make sure to read the rest of the story HERE from ABC News

New port a good idea, says Barnett

New port a good idea, says Barnett

source: western suburbs community news

COTTESLOE MLA Colin Barnett has indicated faster planning for a new Kwinana container port following community opposition to the Perth Freight Link (PFL).

“It might be a good idea to make a decision on a new outer harbour very soon, but even if we started today it wouldn’t be operating for 10 years,” Mr Barnett told a North Fremantle Community Association PFL meeting last Tuesday.

The new port had a claimed cost-benefit ratio of about $8.76 generated for each dollar spent when the Labor Opposition approved the concept design in 2007. Mr Barnett said a report he had read indicated the PFL had a cost-benefit ratio of “about 2.5”, and he said a new port could cost “about $4 billion”.

He said cost could also prevent the not-yet-designed section of the PFL from South Lake to North Fremantle, but the Roe 8 component through Beeliar wetlands to Stock Road, costing “less than $500 million”, would be built, taking a claimed 2000 trucks off Leach Highway daily.

Some of Mr Barnett’s western suburbs’ electors fear the PFL will funnel more trucks and cars to Curtin Avenue and Stirling Highway, after the Fremantle Port Authority estimated trucks using its wharves would quadruple to 13,200 daily by 2030.

Mr Barnett said he could not guarantee Cottesloe and Mosman Park residents would have fewer trucks from the PFL, but there could be “a string of financial incentives” and “a compulsion” for trucks to use the PFL south to Roe Highway.

No decisions had yet been made about the interchanges and flyovers needed for the PFL.

He said even if the 14 per cent of port containers now carried by rail was increased to 30 per cent, an eventual doubling of Fremantle Port containers would still mean 70 per cent were moved on trucks.

Please read the original article HERE from Community News

IRRESPONSIBLE FREIGHT LINK THREATENS WA’S GROWTH

THE HON ALANNAH MACTIERNAN MP
SHADOW PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY FOR WESTERN AUSTRALIA
SHADOW PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY FOR REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND INFRASTRUCTURE
MEMBER FOR PERTH

IRRESPONSIBLE FREIGHT LINK T
HREATENS WA’S GROWTH

The $1.76 billion Perth Freight Link lobbed like a UFO onto the Abbott Government’s first Budget in May 2014.

The sorry genesis of this project tells us a lot about the absurdly partisan way the Abbott Government does business. 

At the beginning of 2014 the Federal Government had a problem. It was about to take $500 million out of the Budget promised to Perth rail project, because Tony Abbott had declared he would never fund urban rail. 

The Abbott Government knew it had to fill that hole to stop an uprising in WA, a state already suffering from a plummeting GST share.

So Assistant Infrastructure Minister Jamie Briggs and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann flew across the Nullarbor in February to sit down with our Transport Minister Dean Nalder.

Mr Nalder went in to pitch for funds for an outer harbour at Kwinana – a plan developed over 20 years by successive governments, both Liberal and Labor, to keep WA’s economy growing once Fremantle port reached its capacity around 2022.

Even the Barnett Government had continued this planning – its 2008 ‘Vision for the Port of Fremantle’ committed the Liberal Party to progressing the outer harbour, and right up until mid-2014, WA Government agencies were still assessing the project.

But 45 minutes into the meeting, Mr Nalder walked out with a cobbled together mix of the Roe Highway Stage 8 extension and upgrades to Fremantle roads in his hand – rebranded as the Perth Freight Link. 

In fact, Freedom of Information searches have shown us that the first contact between Commonwealth and State agencies to provide advice on the cost-benefit and design of the project occurred in mid-March 2014, just two months before it was announced. There was no careful planning and no Infrastructure Australia assessment prior to the announcement.

The problems with this project have been well documented; the destruction of wetlands, the threat to homes and businesses, the ludicrous fact that it stops 1.5km short of the port, forcing a bottleneck at Stirling Bridge. Dealing with the latter two problems will add at least $700 million to the project. 

But the real threat to WA’s future is throwing billions of dollars at a short-term solution that does not address the need for a new port in less than 10 years. 

That’s why infrastructure projects need extensive and transparent planning: to ensure the dollars are being spent in the most effective places.

In 2002 the WA Labor Government undertook an exhaustive freight network review to work out how best to deal with WA’s growing freight needs. 

We knew back then that smashing a highway through suburban Fremantle to reach a port that was nearing capacity wasn’t the answer – that’s why we removed the Fremantle Eastern Bypass from Perth’s planning schemes. 

So we developed a six-point plan for freight. Part of that did involve road upgrades through Fremantle – but critically, it involved planning on the outer harbour as a matter of urgency. 

So much so that Labor committed to building the outer harbour in 2005.

The Perth Freight Link is an irresponsible, ill-planned project that will worsen the congestion problems around Fremantle and threaten WA’s future freight trade growth by leaving us short of critical port capacity. 

If the Barnett and Abbott Governments are serious about future proofing WA’s industries they should get on with planning and developing the outer harbour, and avoid wasting scarce taxpayer money on outdated roads to a constrained port. 

This article was first published in The Sunday Times on Sunday, 30 August 2015.

source: the west australian

Port sale tied to outer harbour bid

Privatisation moves: Fremantle Port is marked down to be sold off.

The City of Kwinana has made an ambitious pitch for the construction of the outer harbour at Cockburn Sound to be brought forward by tying the project to the privatisation of Fremantle Port.

The Kwinana council yesterday unveiled a proposal badged “Indian Ocean Gateway” — a pitch for the metropolitan freight task to shift south by upgrading road and rail links and creating a protection zone around the Kwinana industrial area to prevent urban encroachment.

The proposal has been timed to capitalise on debate around the future of Fremantle Port sparked by the Barnett Government’s Perth Freight Link project. Both sides of State politics say that an outer harbour needs to be developed at some stage in the future though Kwinana is calling for an accelerated timetable.

With Fremantle Port up for privatisation through a long-term lease, Kwinana wants the tender to include a requirement that the outer harbour be built within 10 years.

“The time to act is now,” Kwinana mayor Carole Adams said. “We urge debate on the Indian Ocean Gateway before key decisions are locked away.”

Kwinana’s proposal would also cap container movements through Fremantle Harbour at 500,000 per year by 2025 — 200,000 fewer than current levels — with all container freight to transition to the outer harbour by 2030. Fremantle Port would then be freed for urban redevelopment, under Kwinana’s plan.

The story can be seen by click HERE

Indian Ocean Gateway the ‘missing link’ in freight planning

Source: City of Kwinana Report see it HERE

20/Aug/2015

The local government responsible for the State’s premier industrial area has today released a bold vision proposing an alternative solution to Perth’s freight and port infrastructure issues.

The Indian Ocean Gateway, announced by the City of Kwinana earlier this afternoon, points to the Outer Harbour in Kwinana as the key infrastructure project that will be the catalyst for creating billions of dollars in revenue and tens of thousands of new jobs.

Kwinana Mayor Carol Adams said the Indian Ocean Gateway is the answer the community had been calling for.

“There has been much debate about what the best solution is to Perth’s long-term freight and trade infrastructure needs, but not much has been offered in the way of actual alternatives,” Mayor Adams said.

“That’s why we’ve released the Indian Ocean Gateway proposal – a strategic 50-year vision to encourage serious debate about providing a solution that delivers significant benefits and a substantial return on investment for all West Australians.”

Mayor Adams said the tender for the sale of Fremantle Port should require the construction of the first stage of the Outer Harbour within 10 years.

“That’s the core of the Indian Ocean Gateway proposal. Nearly everyone you ask – from government, to opposition, to industry itself – agrees that the Outer Harbour is the future of port trade in Perth.

“The early announcement by the Government of the sale of Fremantle Port has provided a unique and exciting opportunity to include the Outer Harbour in the tender specification and to expedite its staged construction.”

The Indian Ocean Gateway supports:
- Inclusion of a requirement for construction of the Outer Harbour by 2025 in the tender for the
sale of Fremantle Port.
- Construction of a land-backed port by the private sector with intermodal facilities at the berth
providing modern, state-of-the-art freight handling while unlocking the potential of thousands
of hectares of industrial land.
- A cap of 500,000 TEUs on the Inner Harbour by 2025 and full transition of all container freight
to the Outer Harbour by 2030.
- Improved productivity through the construction and extension of existing dedicated freight
routes, supported by improved rail connections to the industrial hub of Kewdale.

Mayor Adams said the economic and social benefits to all West Australians were immense.

“This proposal will create 25,000 direct jobs and a further 50,000 people will be employed indirectly as a result of the Indian Ocean Gateway.

“At full build-out it’s estimated an extra $42 billion will be added every year to the WA economy.

“The time to act is now. We urge debate on the Indian Ocean Gateway before key decisions are locked away. It’s clear that at the very least, a full and frank discussion needs to be had about what’s in the best interests of our state long-term,” Mayor Adams said.

The Indian Ocean Gateway consultation paper can be viewed, and feedback provided, at www.indianoceangateway.com.au or by contacting the City of Kwinana on 9439 0200.

Push for Kwinana outer harbour to be built within 10 years under Fremantle Port sale

source: abc news

Push for Kwinana outer harbour to be built within
10 years under Fremantle Port sale

Photo: The plan links the sale of Fremantle Port to the construction of new facilities at Kwinana. (Giulio Saggin: ABC News)

The buyer of the Fremantle Port would be required to complete full construction of an outer harbour container port at Cockburn Sound within 10 years, under an ambitious plan being pushed by the Kwinana Council.

The proposal, which will spark further questions about the WA Government's controversial $1.6 billion Perth Freight Link project, is the key recommendation of new 50-year vision released on Thursday by the council to enhance and grow WA's major industrial strip in Kwinana.

Kwinana Mayor Carol Adams said the Indian Ocean Gateway plan proposed an alternative solution to Perth's freight and port infrastructure issues.

The push comes amid ongoing scrutiny of the joint federal and state-funded Perth Freight Link project.

The WA Government has committed to this year starting construction of stage one of that project — to extend Roe Highway from Kwinana Highway through to Stock Road — but is yet to decide on a route and timeframe on the second stage, which will connect to the Fremantle Port.

read more of Jessica Strutt' story at ABC News HERE