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How appropriate then that Mr. Brumby’s business case for channel deepening and PoMC’s relationship with Boskalis goes under scrutiny at the Parliamentary Committee for Finance and Public Administration on World Environment Day, Thursday 5^th June. We expect supporters will join us at Parliament from 9 AM, wearing red and carrying banners. Hearings commence at 10 AM.

Details: http://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/council/SCFPA/PtPhillip/default.html

Blue Wedges will say that Mr. Brumby’s heavily massaged cost/benefit analysis is only anywhere near being in the black because he has allowed PoMC to dump their poisonous sludge for free- something no other industry in Australia is able to legally do! 

Well – the toxic dump in our Bay has to be unlicensed doesn’t it – otherwise Brumby’s mates at Boskalis and PoMC would have trouble getting rid of the millions of tonnes of toxic sludge they are dredging up over coming months. This way they have no costs for storing or treating the toxic material on land. So free dumping in the Bay keeps the project costs down and the so called “benefits” up!

In contrast to the dump in Port Phillip Bay, Nowingi toxic dump was a planned, licensed facility- taking only 30,000 tonnes per annum – and Victorians rejected it. Undeterred, Brumby has since gone on to impose an unlicensed dump site, 60 times the size of Nowingi, in the middle of our Bay!   

All this just so we can shove a few more containers through the Port of Melbourne. Many of these containers arrive full of low cost goods made in factories powered by burning our coal. The goods are then delivered to a cheap junk shop in a diesel belching truck, so we can drive to the shop in our petrol guzzling cars to purchase the piece of tat, which on average we then discard 6 months later.

That treadmill is almost entirely underpinned by ships, which use massive amounts of oil, and produce at least 5% of the worlds Greenhouse Gas emissions. The shipping industry has a lot to answer for, and Mr. Brumby’s plans just entrench the problem.

Monrovian flagged pollution belching High Courage in the middle of our city 9^th May 2008

Photo: P. Crotty