PERTH: Melbourne needs two new ports – one at Hastings and one on the western side of Port Phillip – Captain Richard Cox told the Port of Melbourne Select Committee hearing in Hastings last week.
The committee is gathering information about the Labor government’s proposed long-term lease of the Port of Melbourne to commercial interests, and came to the peninsula for the first time to hear submissions from individuals, councils including Mornington Peninsula Shire and Frankston, and conservation groups.
Captain Cox, a Tyabb resident and former Port of Hastings harbourmaster, told the committee that bulk trade required waterfront space for silos and tanks with wharf loading and unloading infrastructure different from that used for containers.
He said Hastings should be developed as a container port, and the western side of Port Phillip – dubbed Bay West – should be for bulk trade “combining Geelong and Melbourne port facilities”.
After dumping plans for a container port at Hastings last year, the state government said Western Port should become a port for bulk trade. The area is already a bulk trade node with United Terminals (fuel) and Esso (gas and crude oil) operating north of the town, and Swiss company Puma Energy seeking to build a tank farm for imported fuel in the precinct.
Captain Cox said Victoria needed the two new ports if trade was to remain strong “otherwise we will become a backwater and have the added expense of our goods being sent by road from NSW or Adelaide”.
“Businesses will then move closer to these ports with dire consequences for Victoria’s economy,” he said.
The entrance to Port Phillip – The Heads – would not allow transit of bigger container ships, he said.
“One shipping company already wants to bring in vessels that carry 8000 containers and many shipbuilding yards have orders for 10,000 container ships.”
