Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Financial Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On Monday evening, I attended a community meeting with hundreds of locals at the Matraville RSL club, regarding a proposal by Orora paper mills and SUEZ to build a new plant at their site at Matraville. It's a new power plant. The proposal involves Orora and SUEZ transporting waste that cannot be recycled, and which otherwise would go into landfill, into our community in trucks to be burnt at Orora's facility at Matraville. That burning would generate heat that would generate steam to run a turbine to generate electricity to run the plant. The proponents describe this as 'cogeneration', but it's a tricky and sneaky use of the term, because the definition of 'cogeneration' is the utilisation of waste heat, usually from the production of electricity, to run a turbine and produce further energy. This proposal would involve bringing fuel into the site and burning it, and locals are rightfully describing it more accurately as an incinerator. This plant, or this incinerator, will be located at the rear of the Orora site, literally within 100 metres of local residents' homes. There will be a large stack—some people say it will be up to 65 metres high—that will be visible throughout most of Matraville.

Residents are justifiably concerned about the health and environmental effects of having this incinerator next door to their homes. For decades, these residents put up with the stench that came from the paper mills next door to them. Admittedly, Orora fixed that problem and improved that smell many years ago. But the residents also put up with noise from Port Botany, and recently Orora sold off an area to the rear of their site to a developer, who has spent two years coating people's homes in dust and dirt while they move dirt around on the site as part of their excavation process. The local residents are justifiably fed up with what's gone on at the Orora paper site in their community. And now Orora wants to build this incinerator right next door to them.

A similar proposal was put forward in Eastern Creek in 2015 by Next Generation Pty Ltd; they proposed to build an energy-from-waste facility at Eastern Creek. The New South Wales department of planning refused that proposal. They refused it because it was inconsistent with the New South Wales EPA's energy-from-waste policy statement, particularly regarding the air-quality impact and the risk to human health, which the proponent admitted was unknown from this particular proposal. It then went to the Independent Planning Commission for final determination in April 2018. They also refused it, on the grounds of environmental and health effects. That Eastern Creek proposal was more than a kilometre from people's homes, but this proposal by Orora in Matraville is literally a stone's throw from people's homes. Is it any wonder that local residents are strongly opposed to this proposal?

Botany Bay is the most polluted area of any capital city in the country, according to the National Pollutant Inventory, and residents of Botany and surrounding areas have lived with polluted air from the airport, from Port Botany, from the Caltex terminal, from the Elgas terminal, from Orica and from Qenos. And now Orora wants to build an incinerator in that community as well. It's not on. I am strongly opposed to this proposal, and I will fight it on behalf of the community that I am proud to represent. We don't need more pollution in the Botany Bay and Matraville area. We need to look to clean up the atmosphere in our community, and a proposal like this will not help.

I will give Orora and SUEZ credit. They have been consultative. They came to brief me about the proposal, they've been doorknocking residents in the local area, and they held this public meeting the other day. But Orora and SUEZ should heed the advice and the warnings of the local community, who expressed their anger about this proposal at that community meeting on Monday night. They believe it is a bridge too far. I believe it is a bridge too far, because of the health, environmental and pollution effects on our local community, and I call on Orora and SUEZ to drop this ridiculous proposal.