Some thoughts on the sale of Freo Port

May 16, 2015

It’d be fair to say that the recently announced sale of Fremantle Port took everyone by surprise. The Fremantle Council is still trying to digest its implications but it does raise some serious concerns for me.

One – This is the worst possible time to privatize the port. The very future and location of the inner-harbour is under serious debate. Key questions such as how many containers should go through the inner- harbour and when key parts of the port should be moved are very live debates.

Two – A 49 year lease/sale would seem to indicate there is a desire to push the Fremantle Port to it absolute maximum container capacity – otherwise it will sell for less. At the moment around 700,000 containers arrive at the port a year. This figure is growing rapidly and is expected to double to 1.4 million over coming years. Stirling Hwy, High St and Leech Hwy are already overburdened with freight truck traffic and doubling trucks will simply not work. My concern is that the sale of the Port to a profit-focused, private operator locks in a road based freight freeway around Fremantle in the years ahead at the expense of an investment in rail infrastructure with potentially terrible outcomes for Fremantle residents and businesses. As Cr Sullivan correctly said “The freeway style toll road will make access in and out of our city centre hopelessly constrained especially from the north and east.”

I don’t want to be all doom and gloom about it. There may also be benefits. One potential upside is that planning control on Victoria Quay will revert back to City of Fremantle. At the moment they sit with Fremantle Ports and the State Government. Despite Fremantle Ports good improvement in working with the Fremantle Council in recent years it would still be a better outcome if the non-operational areas of the port fell under the City of Fremantle’s planning jurisdiction.

Now the surprise has slightly faded and with the benefit of hindsight you can now see how the State and Federal Governments were planning for sale for some time. Using the $1.6 billion in funding for the Roe 8 and the freight link to boost the port’s value and somewhat oddly use that to reduce state debt

I say oddly because to get the freight link all the way to the Fremantle Port will ultimately cost over $2 billion of government money to build yet the estimated value of the Fremantle Port on a 49 year lease is less than $1.5 billion. It won’t even cover the costs of the road. The whole deal only makes sense because the Feds are putting in $925 million for the freight freeway. But looking at this proposal as a whole, it simply doesn’t make a convincing case for good use of public funds given these are all ultimately taxpayer dollars. And more importantly this sale to push down state debt may have terrible consequences for the liveability and economy of Fremantle.

In other words this is potentially one of the most impactful decisions on Fremantle’s future we have seen in decades. And it has come out of the blue. I strongly support a working port in Fremantle – but not at any cost.

It is so important I believe it and the freight freeway should be taken to the next election so the voters can understand them and judge their merits before we rush into something that may seriously damage the Fremantle we love.