Fremantle Councillor Ben Lawver kindly gave Save Cockburn Sound permission to reproduce this article on our website that recently appeared in the Fremantle Herald . Thanks, Ben! Please note that the author’s opinion doesn’t necessarily entirely represent the view of SCS.
“Instead of welcoming the Cook government’s attempt to ship Fremantle’s beating heart as a port city to Kwinana – we should be questioning if the rushed timeline for the entire Westport project makes economic sense, environmental sense, or any sense at all.
Speaking from my personal experience as someone who spent years on the Westport Taskforce, I can say even a casual comparison between the factors that went into the disputed 2019 recommendation and the latest “business case summary” demonstrate a sober re-examination of the entire project and timeline is necessary.
Cost
In 2019 when Westport chose Kwinana as the future home for container cranes in WA, their decision assumed the new port, road upgrades, and rail improvements would collectively cost less than $4 billion. Costs for the project in “today’s dollars” is now likely more than twice that amount. Westport now estimates a new port by itself will slug taxpayers for at least $7.2 billion not including the required road and rail upgrades.
Environment
Westport chose Kwinana even though there were 17 red flags where environmental values in Cockburn Sound were at “high risk – unclear whether residual impacts can be contained to within acceptable levels” and their environmental weighting only considered a short intermittent dredging campaign. The plans now envision a substantially longer and larger dredging effort with the final design requiring entirely new design requiring entirely new structures such as a massive breakwater.
It would be interesting to find out if the proposed new port breakwater and longer dredging campaign positively or negatively impact any of the environmental “red flags” assessed in the initial decision-making process.
Timing
The decision WA needs a new container port sometime in the 2030s was underpinned by fanciful trade projections requiring every person in WA to nearly triple their consumption of overseas goods by 2068. Set aside the sheer unsustainability of that assumption, we can now actually compare seven years of real-world data against those figures and see if the 2030s timing still makes sense. Spoiler alert, it doesn’t. Container trade is only increasing at about half the rate Westport told us would happen.
These trade numbers compound over time so when the first seven years are 50 per cent lower than predicted, any sense of urgency in the project needs to be reevaluated. Perhaps instead of charging blindly ahead with a container port that we know will cost at least twice as much, will have greater environmental impacts than originally assessed, and will not be needed until well past the 2030s, Westport should re-examine this entire project and follow guidance from Infrastructure Australia which requires projects to look at optimising existing infrastructure as the first step before building anything new. What does “optimising” the existing infrastructure at Fremantle look like? Implementing the Clean Freight for Freo initiative would be a great start. Industry has previously stated they support this initiative to reduce the effects of noise and diesel pollution on residents by ensuring only cleaner and quieter trucks can access the port. Some experts concluded by coupling the Clean Freight for Freo initiative with proven efficiencies and more freight on rail, Fremantle could significantly increase (perhaps double) the container freight task and reduce pollution by 80 per cent all without adding a single extra truck on local roads.
Optimising Fremantle likely means moving the Roll On Roll Off, livestock, and bulk trades to Kwinana before considering moving container cranes. Moving the cranes and containers last would free up port land for future growth, immediately remove about 10 per cent of the trucks currently visiting the port and open up much needed opportunities to develop South Quay into an active precinct connected to Fremantle’s CBD.
Fremantle Port as it is today can handle around 2.4 million TEUs (containers) annually and Westport’s “business case summary” correctly points out there are between 3-4 people living in WA for every TEU traded. Using today’s figures, that means our efficient container port in Fremantle can easily handle our trade task until the population in Western Australia increases to somewhere between 7.2 – 9.6 million people. A new container port is just not needed right now and the billions it would cost are better spent on other priorities. Having a working port on our doorstep has been intertwined with Fremantle’s identity for over 120 years and I believe the facts are clear – the industrial ballet of ships, containers, and cranes should be at the forefront of how Freo grows well into the future; not shipped south, based on an old decision made using outdated information and inaccurate estimates.”
