Anne Connolly: My seven-year-old son recently started going to a new school in the Sydney suburb of Balmain, some distance from our house. A few times a week I drive both him and my neighbours’ children to the school on the Balmain peninsula. The route takes us along the harbour and past White Bay where massive cruise ships moored during the peak cruise season.

Oh yeah, there's one in today. You see?

Child: Oh yeah.

Anne Connolly: What's it called, that one?

Child: Seabourne Odyssey. There's a lot of cabins.

Child: It's a little bit smaller than the Titanic, definitely.

Anne Connolly: I'd been hearing complaints about the ships from local residents and I'd also read the Daily Tele's headline: 'Balmain's NIMBYs Vow to Stop Cruise Ships'. My first contact was with Balmain local resident Kate Horrobin, who has been complaining to the state's Environment Protection Authority from the time the terminal was relocated there two years ago.

Kate Horrobin: We realised over a number of months that a lot of the neighbours were becoming sick and we started talking to each other about the fact that we had unusual headaches that we'd never experienced before, that little kids were getting sick with asthma that they hadn't had before or those with asthma were having worsening symptoms. People were experiencing respiratory problems and so on, even nausea. All of these things were unusual symptoms. And so we started to put two and two together and think about the cruise ships as being the new entrant into the local area and we started to do some research, and we were pretty horrified by what we found.

Anne Connolly: What Kate Horrobin and her neighbours found was that the acrid odours coming from the ships were caused by the low grade diesel they were burning. It releases sulphur dioxide, other dangerous chemicals and heavy metals into the air. These cruise ships keep their engines running while in port to power refrigeration, air conditioning and lighting. But instead of burning low sulphur diesel such as that used in cars and trucks, they burn the cheapest fuel available -- bunker fuel.

Daniel Lack: It's the bottom of the barrel of oil. Once the refiners take all of that good stuff off, you're left with the sludge at the bottom.

Anne Connolly: Daniel Lack, a transport and climate change consultant who has worked with the US EPA, explains what bunker fuel is.

Daniel Lack: That is a concentrate of really complicated hydrocarbons. It's concentrated sulphur. It's concentrated heavy metals. This stuff is so thick that you actually have to heat it to make it flow. And that's the fuel that these ships are burning.

Anne Connolly: Diesel is now considered a grade one carcinogen as determined by the World Health Organisation three years ago. People near major traffic have concerns about the fumes from road diesel which has 0.001% sulphur. The bunker fuel being burned at White Bay has a sulphur content of up to 3.5%—3,500 times the level of road diesel.

Kate Horrobin: Naturally our first reaction was complete and utter disbelief. We couldn't believe that in this day and age a first world county and a first world government would submit its citizens to such conditions.

Anne Connolly: What Balmain residents have since discovered is that the bunker fuel being burned by the ships at White Bay is banned from northern hemisphere ports because of its effects on health.

Since 2010, Europe has required ships to switch to low sulphur fuel when in port. In the US, cruise ships must stay 200 nautical miles—or 360 kilometres—offshore if they are still burning bunker fuel.

Dan Lack did research on the EPA bans in the US.

Daniel Lack: The US EPA went and did a whole lot of computer modelling and they were able to show that a 200 nautical mile limit would reduce particle pollution by the most efficient amount. They chose a 200 nautical mile limit based on modelling of the health impacts.

Anne Connolly: No Australian state has any such restrictions on its cruise ships or other shipping.

Australia's leading expert on shipping emissions is Dr Laurie Goldsworthy from the Australian Maritime College in Tasmania who has been studying shipping emissions and their impacts for the past 10 years.

Laurie Goldsworthy: I guess it just hasn't entered people's minds that the ships sailing out there in the ocean, that anything that comes out of the funnels could actually be having any impact on the cities. The point we are reaching now is that virtually every other source of pollution in urban areas has been identified and controlled. Shipping is a bit of a last frontier and regulating authorities are just starting to take them more seriously now.

Anne Connolly: The White Bay cruise terminal was given the green light by the previous state Labor government. It needed to move the ships from their former terminal at what is now called Barangaroo. When Lend Lease won the tender for Barangaroo part of the deal with the state government was to pay for the move to White Bay at a cost of $57 million.

Kate Horrobin: In 2010 it looks like the government fast-tracked the planning approval process. They needed to get the ships out of Barangaroo as quickly as they possibly could and White Bay was the closest and the easiest option. It doesn't look like appropriate consideration was given to the impacts on the local community.

Anne Connolly: White Bay is at the centre of one of the most densely populated suburbs in Sydney. Houses sit on top of a cliff with the cruise ships berthed directly below them. That means the funnels on these multi-storey cruise ships are at the same height as houses.

Kate Horrobin: Over a nine hour period, which is the average visit for a lot of the ships that come into the White Bay terminal, it will emit the same amount as 28.5 million cars. We're talking about 28.5 million cars out of a single emissions point which is at exactly the same level as our homes.

Anne Connolly: There is a hospital, numerous child care centres and five schools within a kilometre of the cruise terminal. Parents at the closest of the schools have been reporting symptoms they are convinced are related to the ships.

Lisa-Marie Murphy is one of the parents lobbying against the cruise ships. She says it's especially bad when they stay overnight.

Lisa-Marie Murphy: It's like a massive power station and it's not clean diesel, it's dirty bunker fuel. We've had seven overnight stays in a five-week period. In the peak cruise season, not only do you have ships here often every day or every second or third day, then you have them here overnight. Now, what we're talking about is a ship that typically comes in at 7am, it's there all day normally, leaves around four, burning this fuel, enough fuel that would power 15,000 homes.

Anne Connolly: Another parent, Valeria Volpini, believes her son's asthma has escalated from an occasional, seasonal occurrence to a severe problem.

Valeria Volpini: Last year, it changed completely in probably a couple of weeks after school started and he's now in the playground at school which is basically 500 metres from the White Bay terminal, he started to have very bad asthma attacks. So the type that he was waking me up at night at 1 o'clock, he wouldn't even tell me what was going on. He was gasping for air and he was panicking, I could see it on his face.

Anne Connolly: But of course it's very difficult to prove his asthma attacks are being caused by the ships' emissions. Valeria was referred to a specialist who prescribed steroids to prevent the attacks.

Valeria Volpini: With a preventer, it's under control but he still comes home from school, because it's so close to the terminal, with very red eyes, bloodshot eyes, they're full of mucus. And that's one of the effects of the sulphur dioxide that is in the air. And he coughs. There are so many kids at school that are in exactly the same conditions. If you ask around in the playground, so many kids are on medications at the moment because of this.

Anne Connolly: Another parent I spoke to is Jo Jorgensen who lives about 600 metres from the terminal.

Jo Jorgensen: I started to mark days in the calendar to see whether my children's headaches land on the same days as when the cruise ships are in. Unfortunately, it is the case. I have three children, a 12-year-old, 10-year-old and a six-year-old, and without doubt on the days that the cruise ships are in they will wake up in the morning grimacing, going 'my head, my head, my head'.

Heartbreaking for a mother, heartbreaking to see that it's something that could potentially be stopped. Most mothers don't want to be putting 30 ml of Panadol into three kids every morning before they go to school only to realise that they're down playing in a playground and they'll be home in three hours and asking for more.

Anne Connolly: And then there's Seaneen Blair whose five-year-old daughter was an occasional asthma sufferer until she started kindergarten at a school near the terminal. She now sleeps with a ventilator in her room.

Seaneen Blair: Since she went to kindergarten last year down here we've seen a dramatic increase in her asthma as well as severity. All of her meds had to be increased significantly. She's had several lung infections. She's had pneumonia. Originally, I put it down to going to a big school and new germs and whatnot but it definitely was not that. Now, she went back to school after a six-week holiday. We had no asthma at all during the six weeks and she wasn't at school obviously. Then within three days of her returning, her asthma was through the roof and there had been a ship in overnight. There is no doubt in my mind that there is a direct link to the irritation and increase in her asthma.

Anne Connolly: Like other residents, Seaneen says it's worst when ships stay overnight.

Seaneen Blair: It's just worse. If it's here during the daytime, her asthma is triggered but if it does do an overnight stay where that fuel is just continually burning then she has headaches, she has severe asthma to the point where it triggers vomiting with her at night time because she's struggling so much to breathe.

Anne Connolly: She says she'll move her child to another school if there's no change when the next cruise season starts.

Seaneen Blair: I have set a deadline for the end of the year that if there's no significant changes I'm going to have to move her. I can't. It's like me knowingly putting my child into a room filled with asbestos. It's just…I can't do it with a clear conscience. A decision has to be made. And if I don't see any changes by the end of this year, I will definitely move her.

Anne Connolly: If the cruise industry continues to grow as it has been, there will be many more ships coming to Sydney Harbour, and to the White Bay terminal.

[Cruise advertisement]

Carnival Cruises is the largest cruise company in the world, accounting for almost half the $32 billion global market. It has its own fleet in Australia.

Ann Sherry: With more ships, more cruise options, from shore breaks to long voyages and everything else in between…

Anne Connolly: Here's Carnival's Australian CEO Ann Sherry hosting a corporate event on board the Pacific Pearl, one of the most frequent visitors to White Bay.

Ann Sherry: So there's no doubt that national and regional governments have recognised what a powerhouse cruising is. It's hard to ignore an industry that's generating thousands of jobs, millions of dollars in providoring, an all-up value-added contribution of over a billion dollars a year.

Anne Connolly: Ann Sherry described the expected growth for Carnival Cruises in Australia.

Ann Sherry: As we look ahead, what's coming over the next five years? There's so much possibilities still. Why not a market penetration of 10%? It's never been done anywhere. But equally nobody has grown a market as fast as we have.

Anne Connolly: But Carnival Cruises in Australia, the most regular user of the White Bay terminal, has resisted calls for their ships to switch to cleaner fuel.

In its 2013 annual report, Carnival Cruises says having to comply with changes to environmental laws and regulations could 'adversely affect our operations and thus impact our profitability'.

Daniel Lack says there was similar opposition to change in the US.

Daniel Lack: There's also an argument about cost that you have. This cleaner fuel costs about twice as much as the bunker fuel so they were saying that it was going to impact their bottom line but of course they're only burning this cleaner fuel in a very small amount of the distance that they travel. There definitely was opposition but I think over the course of the years, in studies like some that I published and many other colleagues, they were able to show that these regulations were actually having significant impacts on the reduction of pollution and reduction in cancer risk.

Anne Connolly: The minimal extra cost could easily be absorbed, says Kate Horrobin.

Kate Horrobin: This industry claims to be a billion-dollar industry. We think that the cost of implementing solutions which are well known and have been implemented overseas, and in fact those very cruise lines have agreed to implement overseas, would be a rounding error when compared to the billion dollars of revenue.

Anne Connolly: There are three solutions which have been taken up overseas: shore power, which allows ships to plug into the local power grid; low sulphur fuel; or a filtration system or scrubbers to clean the dirty emissions from bunker fuel.

The residents around White Bay have been looking to the NSW Environment Protection Authority for solutions. The EPA works with a range of government departments, industry and communities affected by pollution.

One of Sydney's veteran environmental campaigners is Jeff Angel from the Total Environment Centre who's worked alongside the EPA. He told me the regulator hasn't always lived up to its name as the environment's protector.

Jeff Angel: We were certainly promised an independent environmental watchdog, that's why it's got 'environment protection' in its name, but in the realities of government it's come up against the pragmatism of economic forces, the influence on other ministers, pressures on their minister, and, in general, you would have to say it operates in the territory of compromise.

Anne Connolly: He says the pollution from the cruise ships is another example of a failure of environmental assessment.

Jeff Angel: Anyone would've known that when you have these polluting cruise ships with their large smokestacks very close to residences that you would get problems and you should do something about it and prevent the cruise ship industry getting an economic basis on that sort of sloppy pollution control. So that was a severe regulatory failure, a severe public health failure.

Anne Connolly: Members of the Balmain community have been part of a consultation committee with the EPA but despite lots of discussion, not a lot has happened. It's a consultation model Jeff Angel questions.

Jeff Angel: So-called community consultation, committees that sit there receiving information and most of the time is taken up by EPA or officials telling them about the information. You really need a proper platform for a robust debate between stakeholders, because you can often find that businesses, once they're pushed, are interested in being socially and environmentally responsible.

Frank: Barry Buffier, who is the head of the EPA, has indicated that 2020, which is the current target for the shipping industry, is not soon enough. We are looking to have it done well sooner than that. Having said that, it's still going to take a little bit of time. These are very difficult, complex issues that have to be brought in and because of that there is no quick fix.

Anne Connolly: Balmain residents say they've grown tired of being told there is nothing the EPA can do.

Frank: We're continuing to look for other solutions and if you have any ideas on other solutions I'm very, very keen to hear it.

Man: Yes, stop the ships coming. I mean, seriously, you're saying there's no quick fix. There is a quick fix. Stop poisoning our community. We've had enough.

Woman: I don't actually even live along that street but I walk endlessly around this area. I live up on Darling St. You talk about noise of fans and you give us all this gobbledygook and you give us enough so we won't ask questions. When those ships are in, I actually walk with a mask, I put it over my face and sometimes I turn around and I walk back home. That's where I walk but I can't walk there because it's so disgusting.

Frank: I absolutely understand completely and, as I said…

Woman: We saw it with asbestos, we've seen it with lead, who will take the responsibility for this because it's feeling like it's all over the place. Who are we going to sue when my grandchildren are sick?

Anne Connolly: The EPA was the subject of a state parliamentary inquiry into its performance and its involvement in six different cases, including the White Bay cruise terminal.

The EPA's CEO Barry Buffier was questioned about the influence of other departments during the environmental planning assessment.

Barry Buffier: We had the opportunity to comment on the environmental issues that we thought might become apparent there. In fact, some of that has proven to be the case. Some of the planning consents did take those concerns into account but not to 100 per cent of the issues that we raised. If you are asking me is pressure put on me by those other agencies to go easy on them, the answer is no.

Anne Connolly: The EPA did make a submission to the Department of Planning and the Ports Authority, suggesting shore power be installed at the White Bay terminal but it was ignored. It also failed to insist on low sulphur fuel, as is used overseas.

The EPA made no mention of international research showing that shipping emissions from bunker fuel were a danger to health. The long term health impacts are what worried residents most. Bunker fuel is full of toxic chemicals but it's the particulate matter produced when it burns which is of greatest concern.

Daniel Lack: There's a classification called PM2.5. That's the diameter that can actually get into the lungs and start having health impacts. The particles that come out of ships would be referred to as PM.1 so they are 0.1 microns in diameter. They're the most efficient at getting all the way down to the bottom of the lungs and causing health impacts.

Anne Connolly: So in that case what would be your opinion then of a cruise ship burning bunker fuel 100 metres from homes?

Daniel Lack: When that fuel burns the sulphur comes out as sulphur dioxide. It's very clear what sulphuric acid does to people's lungs. There is no doubt that all of that sulphur dioxide is going to have a significant impact locally. Then, in addition to that, these bunker fuels have a lot of heavy metals in them. When you burn the fuel you have black smoke coming out. That black smoke, black carbon, can actually soak up all those heavy metals, and because these particles are so fine, they're 100 nanometres in diameter, they can get all the way to the bottom of the lungs. And it's that sulphuric acid, it's that black carbon, it's those heavy metals, when they're concentrated in a local area will very easily get in there. They know that these particles have cancer causing effects.

Anne Connolly: Australia's leading researcher on shipping emissions, Laurie Goldsworthy, says environmental and health impacts from ship emissions are well established.

Laurie Goldsworthy: Those are the reasons why special emission control areas have been put in place in various parts of the world especially around Europe and on the coasts of the North American coasts. There are quite well known studies that have used good science to establish how the emissions move from the sea and from ports across urban regions and the sorts of health impacts that that results in. It's mainly the fine particle emissions that these studies have concentrated on.

Anne Connolly: What are the health impacts that have been established?

Laurie Goldsworthy: Globally it's about lung and heart disease and accelerated mortality due to the extra exposure to fine particles resulting from the ship emissions moving over urban areas. They can travel a long way, hundreds of kilometres.

Anne Connolly: Down at the White Bay terminal on a day when a big ship is in, resident John Priest pointed to the exhaust coming from its funnels which are just 100 metres from his home.

John Priest: Right at the moment, we don't notice anything but some days when you're unlucky enough to get the wind in, it's basically the smell of rotten egg gas. You can't even lock your house down and you still have to get out. So a lot of the people just leave. These are class one carcinogens that are being pumped by thousands of tonnes into the atmosphere and it's not just a Balmain residents' issue, it's a Sydney issue because these things fly up to 50 kilometres away. And if you live in Parramatta and you're unlucky enough to breathe one of these nanoparticles in, then I'm sorry, it's not good news.

Anne Connolly: When the parliamentary inquiry returned with its report in February it found the EPA's reaction to resident complaints had been far from swift and that the EPA could have taken more proactive and persuasive action during the approval process. It also said the former Labor government had made a 'serious error' in moving the cruise ship terminal from Barangaroo, as it was clearly the best site and was part of the original plans for that development. Its final recommendation was that the White Bay facility should be retrofitted with shore power.

I made contact with the EPA several times following the release of the report to request an interview with CEO Barry Buffier but the regulator refused and pointed me to its evidence at the inquiry.

So I went to the Environment Minister Rob Stokes

Rob Stokes: I think it is absolutely appalling that the former Labor government made a decision to approve a passenger terminal with no provision for ship to shore power in the middle of a heavily built up residential area. Nevertheless, we've got to live with the legacy of that decision.

Anne Connolly: The EPA didn't quote any of the evidence overseas where these fuels have been banned. Is that appropriate for an authority which is supposed to be protecting the environment and the health of the community?

Rob Stokes: Well, I can certainly comment about my actions since becoming minister and I can tell you very clearly that this has been a top priority for me. Air quality issues are absolutely paramount to environmental protection and the protection of human health.

Anne Connolly: But do you agree that the EPA didn't object loudly enough?

Rob Stokes: There are many ways in which we can look at the EPA's performance and look to constantly improve their performance.

Anne Connolly: Balmain residents welcomed the inquiry's recommendations that shore power be installed but they want a much quicker solution. They were surprised and disappointed there was no mention of low sulphur fuel.

Carnival Cruises is the biggest operator at White Bay and it has ships which are more than 25 years old. It has pledged to meet an international standard for lower sulphur fuel, known as MARPOL, by 2020. But that's still five times higher than is allowed in US and European ports. Kate Horrobin says that's not good enough.

Kate Horrobin: Our understanding is that that's intended particularly to target third world countries or developing countries where the standards have traditionally been lower anyway. It's not intended as a standard for ships burning fuel right smack-bang next to large residential populations. We say that MARPOL in 2020 is five years too late and five times higher than the level that the rest of the developed world is working to in terms of 0.1% sulphur fuel.

Anne Connolly: The cruise ships that come into Sydney use a much dirtier fuel than a lot of the other harbour traffic, says John Priest.

John Priest: The ferries use road diesel. The navy uses shore power. So when a navy frigate comes in, it comes in and immediately switches its engines off and goes straight on to shore power.

Anne Connolly: And it is possible for older ships to switch to low sulphur fuel, says Laurie Goldsworthy.

Laurie Goldsworthy: Yes, yes that's been done routinely in numerous parts of the world, these special emission control areas, many, many ships daily doing that. And since 2010 all ships at berth in EU ports have been required to burn low sulphur fuel while at berth.

Anne Connolly: I tried to get an interview with Ann Sherry, the CEO of Carnival Cruises Australia, to ask her why the company wouldn't use low sulphur fuel but my request was declined. The company also chose not to attend the parliamentary inquiry into the EPA but it did make a submission, saying that low sulphur fuels as used overseas are not readily available here.

Daniel Lack says the same argument was used in the US.

Daniel Lack: I know that that has been a major point for many of the shipping companies. There hasn't actually been proven to be any shortfalls. There are technologies that can take this bunker fuel and clean it up even more. I think the real point here is that it is more expensive. That is more likely to be the point of contention rather than the availability.

Anne Connolly: It's not just residents at White Bay affected by ship emissions. Cruise ships at Circular Quay and other ports around the country also burn bunker fuel.

Laurie Goldsworthy: They'd be burning almost certainly relatively high sulphur fuel, somewhere between 2 per cent and 3 per cent sulphur, while at berth.

Anne Connolly: The Overseas Passenger Terminal at Circular Quay has just undergone a facelift worth $75 million to cope with the growing passenger numbers. But despite the controversy at White Bay and the international trend of installing shore power, the government didn't put it in at Circular Quay.

I asked Laurie Goldsworthy if he thinks there should be shore power at Circular Quay.

Laurie Goldsworthy: I think ultimately it's a good idea, yes.

Anne Connolly: Do you think that there is a reason why it didn't go in with the recent refurbishment?

Laurie Goldsworthy: No.

Anne Connolly: The Ports Authority told us it didn't install shore power as part of the upgrade because most of the ships coming to Australia do not have not have the capability to use it. But new ships do have that capability.

I asked Environment Minister Rob Stokes why shore power hadn't been installed:

Circular Quay Overseas Passenger Terminal has just gone through a $75 million upgrade. There hasn't been shore power installed there. Considering we know all of the problems that exist overseas and the bans that there are on bunker fuel, why wasn't shore power installed there?

Rob Stokes: These are the issues that need to be addressed in terms of low sulphur content fuels. That is one of the key recommendations that is being looked at. As I've mentioned, there are three ways. There's ship to shore power, that's an expensive solution. There are also the idea of scrubbers within ships themselves but the solution that we have a particular focus on is in relation to insisting on low sulphur content fuels. Obviously that depends on the capacity to have fuel available, and that's something that we're looking at presently.

Anne Connolly: You haven't actually answered the question about what's happening at Circular Quay because the EPA and yourself and all of the government departments have been speaking in detail with the Balmain community and you are now well aware of what restrictions there are overseas but shore power wasn't installed at Circular Quay even though in hundreds of ports around the world that's what's happening. Why hasn't that happened? Why didn't the EPA make a submission on that?

Rob Stokes: Well, you have to speak specifically to the EPA in relation to that issue.

Anne Connolly: But the EPA wouldn't speak to me. We've put a series of questions to them which you can see on the Background Briefing website.

For a moment back in December last year, Balmain residents saw a possible solution from the EPA. After almost two years of being told that it had no power to stop the ships burning bunker fuel, CEO Barry Buffier told the parliamentary inquiry the EPA did have the power to regulate. He's being asked a question here by Luke Foley who's now the Opposition leader.

Luke Foley: What I want to know is when will the talking stop? If the industry won't come to the party, when will you bring out the stick?

Barry Buffier: I think a key point is engaging these international experts to do the work because we need to understand what is technically feasible. We could probably introduce a regulation tomorrow, which would mean that you wouldn't have cruise ships in Sydney Harbour. So the regulatory ability to do it probably exists now. We don't think we need to do anything special in that regard. Under the Clean Air Regulation, we think we've got that power. So the consultants will finalise their report by February I think is the time frame, and at that point we would be looking to make a determination.

Luke Foley: After February?

Barry Buffier: Yes.

Anne Connolly: But last month in February the Balmain residents' group was told that they couldn't have access to that international experts' report referred to by Barry Buffier until it had been assessed by the EPA. They were told a 'timetable for action' would be announced after July. For the residents, that was too long when the solution appeared to be obvious.

John Priest: They've been looking into it and looking into it and we have committee after committee coming back with the same thing after the same thing after the same thing.

Lisa-Marie Murphy: And the immediate solution is to either move the ships temporarily or to require that the cruise companies use low sulphur fuel. It's not that difficult. I'm sure it could be achieved very quickly, like it has been overseas. To us, that must be done immediately.

Anne Connolly: With the state election just around the corner, the Balmain residents turned to prominent shock jock Alan Jones who they'd been calling and emailing for weeks. He then read out an email and told his listeners about a community meeting where two of the candidates standing at the election spoke about how they would fix the cruise ship problem.

Alan Jones: It was very telling that despite being invited, there was no representative of the current government. Clearly neither this issue, nor our families, nor our health are considered important enough. How appropriate and depressing it was that as the representatives spoke tonight that the crowd experienced the stench of diesel fumes from the ship that was in port, the Oosterdam.

Anne Connolly: On the same day last week that Alan Jones took up the cruise ship issue, I had a scheduled interview with the Environment Minister Rob Stokes where I asked him again about the EPA and its power to step in:

Barry Buffier told the inquiry recently that the EPA does have to power to regulate tomorrow under the Clean Air Act. Is that going to happen?

Rob Stokes: We are aware that we have the power to regulate and that's why we are having these conversations with industry. We've told them that action is to be taken. We've told them we want to act collaboratively with them towards that but we've made it very clear to them that change is required.

Anne Connolly: How long is it going to be before these ships are required to burn low sulphur fuel?

Rob Stokes: Again, watch this space.

Anne Connolly: Clearly influenced by the Alan Jones factor, the minister said he had an announcement to make in a few days. But at 11pm that night, his office sent me a press release saying that, if returned to government, it would demand cruise ships burn low sulphur fuel from July 1 next year.

The local residents of Balmain are happy with the announcement but it means that there will be at least one more cruise ship season where they'll have to endure the same pollution. They're hoping any damage to their health and the health of their children isn't permanent.

Lisa-Marie Murphy: You don't know what's in their lungs and you don't know what effect that's going to have in 20 or 30 years. The thing is that this should never have happened. This terminal being built there should have been built with shore power and with low sulphur fuel, like they use in the rest of the northern hemisphere, Europe, North America, even the Caribbean.

Anne Connolly: Background Briefing's coordinating producer is Linda McGinness, research by Anna Whitfeld, technical production by Andrei Shabunov, the executive producer is Chris Bullock, and I'm Anne Connolly.