Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to set out on record for my constituents my views in relation to the recently released Port of Hastings strategic plan draft comments. In particular, I want to set out what I am for and what I am against, because I believe that my constituents have a right to understand precisely where I stand on this issue.

The first thing I want to address is the proposed bitumen facility within the heart of Crib Point. Crib Point is a thriving community. It is a group of wonderful people. It was formerly an industrial site, but it has become, increasingly, a residential site as the industrial purposes were abandoned over the previous decades. In that context, after having considered it for some period of time, I believe clearly and categorically that a bitumen plant in the middle of that community would be wrong and inappropriate, and it would not have my support.

I say this for two reasons: firstly, the risks in relation to the plant itself and its likely impacts on residents in terms of the environment year round and, secondly, the number of B-double truck movements in and out of the town and right through the middle of Hastings on a daily basis. These two factors combined together—firstly, the environmental effects on and within the local community and, secondly, the B-double truck movement through the heart of Crib Point and through the heart of Hastings—make this an inappropriate place and an inappropriate facility, particularly given that there is a viable alternative to the north of Hastings in between the Esso and BlueScope steel plants, an industrial zone that is available today. So I am not against the economic project; I am against that particular site in the middle of a community, which is inappropriate.

That brings me to my second point—that I am not against many of the provisions in the plan. I think that development in the northern sector between Esso and BlueScope has been contemplated for 40 years, has been set aside, is an industrial zone and is for an entirely appropriate use. I do, however—and this brings me to my third point—reject the notion that land between the towns of Somerville and Tyabb should be used for industrial purposes. That is a residential area. It is farmland, it is community land; it is not the place. There is very little prospect of federal intervention here. Some have asked, but we do not have the powers. It is ultimately a choice between what the state candidate, Neil Burgess, sets out and what the state government is doing in supporting a bitumen plant in Crib Point. (Time expired)