Botany Bay and Catchment Alliance

 Community engagement is not a magic wand that can be waved to make all parties happy. If community engagements are not conducted in good faith and do not fully engage the community, they can be perceived as cynical and manipulative exercises. They may also be seen as tokenism responding to dominant voices and ignoring the broader community, as a means of co-opting groups or defusing opposition, as falsely raising public expectations, or as substitutes for good government and sound policy making.

This is why community engagements must be conducted in a clear, transparent manner that provides the public and all participants with a realistic understanding of the policy and decision making process and the range of possible outcomes. Part of this approach is clarifying the limits of the community’s influence in the process. This is particularly necessary when the decision making power ultimately rests with government. Without a clear definition of the realities of a particular situation, it is inevitable that a sense of distrust will be generated about the engagement process.

The above is contained in a document produced by the NSW Department of Planning.  As you can see, The Department of Planning is not/has not been bereft of good planning ideas.  You can read about them in:

Community Engagement in the NSW Planning System: Handbook and Website Full link  published in 2003

You have to question the wisdom that lists Bondi Beach on the National Heritage Register but omits Botany Bay. 

Sure Bondi is a tourist icon but in terms of national identity, culture, historical significance does it rank before Botany Bay.

According to the criteria by which the items on the list are judged “Australia’s national heritage comprises exceptional natural and cultural places which help give Australia its national identity. Such places are a living and accessible record of the nation’s evolving landscapes and experiences.National heritage defines the critical moments in our development as a nation …”     Phillip first stepped ashore on January 18, 1788 at Yarra Bay on the north of Botany Bay just beating the French.  How defining is that.  Almost eighteen years earlier it was Cook who explored, recorded and named Botany Bay.  Thereafter whenever reference was made to the fledging colony it was to Botany Bay.  And now the Minister for Environment, Heritage and The Arts and representative for the waters and bed of Botany Bay is Peter Garrett.  Mr Garrett’s first additions to the National Heritage Register are Bonegilla Migrant Camp Block 19 and Bondi Beach. 

For further details on the Register http://www.environment.gov.au/heritage/national/index.html

The following is an opinion piece prepared for publication in The Age.  The subject matter is the dredging of Port Phillip Bay but similar could be written about  local processes in regard to the Port Botany Expansion and projects like Desalination. 

BRUMBY BARGES ON

Mr. Brumby has over stepped the mark. The debate about channel deepening is not over Mr. Brumby (Age 23/1) because you have never let it happen. Since first floating to the top around 1999 the channel deepening project has had an armchair ride through open doors, greased and oiled by the Bracks-Brumby machine. Treasury insiders tell us that the Bracks Brumby Batchelor machine was on a mission to ram through channel deepening, regardless of what Treasury had to say. For years words straight from the PoMC’s glossy promotional brochures have appeared like magic on the lips of politicians.

The public has financed $120 million of spin, not science and we are now having it rammed down our throats by the likes of the VFF, who should rather be asking if, as is the case, almost 40% of our export containers are empty, why the hell should they be paying a huge increase in container charges to finance a project which they don’t need? The truth is our primary producers (our biggest exporters) have much more to fear from climate change and drought than they have from shipping channels remaining at their current depth. There are no containers ‘sittin on the dock of the Bay’, and PriceWaterhouse Coopers in its 2007 Economic Analysis of the Port of Melbourne reports that trade through the port will quadruple in 30 years regardless of whether we have channel deepening.  Sadly at the 2007 Inquiry the VFF expressed no concerns at all for their primary producing fishermen colleagues who will suffer a drought in the Bay if channel deepening proceeds.

Whilst there has been plenty of chatter about how much we “need” channel deepening, the silence from government agencies connected with the Bay is deafening.  The EPA, Department of Fisheries, Parks Victoria, Tourism Victoria et al have sat on their hands under the direction of Mr. Brumby. (more…)

The following article by Peter Christoff appears in The Age today.  Very timely considering the Business as Usual attitude (Channel Dredging in Port Phillip Bay and Desalination Plant) coming from the Victorian State Government.

January 15, 2008, The Age
 In a hundred years, the planet will be unrecognisable.

AFTER the hottest year on record for Victoria, and with a few scorchers already under the belt in 2008, most Victorians seem to have headed to the coast. Where better, then, to re-read Neville Shute’s On the Beach. Set in Melbourne, Shute’s novel explores humanity’s last months after a nuclear war that has annihilated the northern hemisphere, leaving radioactive fallout drifting inexorably southward, extinguishing all in its path and with Melbourne the last temporary refuge. (more…)