Full Steam ahead down a dead end

The Baillieu government has issued an enthusiastic statement reconfirming its support for a massive expansion of the Port of Hastings
 The Baillieu government has issued an enthusiastic statement reconfirming its support for a massive expansion of the Port of Hastings, including handling more than 2 million containers per annum (that’s what Port of Melbourne currently handles), thousands of truck trips per day, and compulsorily acquiring private property around the port and along transport corridors. Ports Minister Denis Napthine describes it as the biggest infrastructure project in Victoria in a century.
 
Read all about their grand “vision” here: Full steam ahead for our new port
 
In response, Blue Wedges President Jenny Warfe told Westernport News:
 
“Perhaps now people may get a better idea of the juggernaut about to descend on peaceful Hastings and its rural surrounds. It won’t be Hastings as we know it with just a little bit more traffic and a few more ships; it would be a dirty industrial city area bigger than the portside suburbs around the Port of Melbourne.  
 
Dr. Napthine seems happy to trash an internationally significant wetland and tourism hub and even more of our Green Wedges. All with incalculable value. If he’s given his head, we’d end up with Western Port looking like what you see from the Westgate Bridge. A ghastly, dirty, lifeless yet unbearably congested and polluted landscape; criss-crossed by roads, freeways and rail tracks.
 
Can anyone really want Hastings to look like Port Melbourne, Spotswood, Footscray, Altona, Newport and Yarraville all rolled into one? And all just so we can go down the business as usual dead end for a little longer before we hit the inevitable ecological brick wall. Time for a different paradigm”.     
 
Meanwhile, former Brumby government Port’s Minister Tim Pallas, (who presided over a Port of Hastings Plan strikingly similar to the one Port’s Minister Denis Napthine is now spruiking), is now very concerned about Baillieu government plans to allow “monster trucks” on our roads. Would that be like the monster trucks that would have been rumbling up and down the Westernport highway if Mr. Brumby’s plan had come to pass?


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