Selective " Clean Air " Legislation.

It seems that a shiny new car will soon cost us several thousand dollars more because its engine will be required to produce less noxious gases and travel more kilometres on the same amount of fuel.  The medical profession applauds - and so do the scientists who worry that the pollution we are pumping into the air is making this planet hotter - and leading to a thermal disaster.

Many people remember when just about every Sydney home had a concrete block incinerator in the backyard.   It was the custom to burn household rubbish until that was banned as a clean air measure.  Now just having a backyard is a fond memory.  Sheer numbers have forced most of us to live in a " vertical village ".

It is a matter of pride that Sydney is one of the most important ports of call on most cruise ship Pacific itineraries.  Across the entire world when people think of Australia they envisage our famous harbour bridge and the towering sails of the Opera house.  In fact we are turning cruise ships away simply because the numbers have grown too big for the amount of wharf space available in Sydney harbour.

One of the problems is that the new ships are too big to fit under the harbor bridge.  It helps that the smaller ships can dock at the White Bay cruise terminal, but for some strange reason this lacks the ability for shore to ship electricity supply.  As a result, the ships must keep their engine running while they are in port and residents are subjected to noxious exhaust fumes from the almost crude oil fuel their engines consume.  Not only does this settle in harbourside suburbs, most of it drifts to the outer west where air quality is already poor.

Legislation forced the cruise ship industry to install additional fuel tanks and change to a low sulphur and low nitrogen oxide emission fuel while in harbour but this has not produced the hoped for relief. Hooking ships docked at White Bay to the shore electricity supply is back in contention and a three year parliamentary enquiry is predicting that it will cost a whopping twenty-seven million dollars to create this facility. Most people query that costing.

Whited Bay is both a residential suburb and the home of heavy industry.  The demand from a cruise ship would be similar to several tower blocks of apartments - and these are being constantly added without power supply problems.   This parliamentary enquiry also disclosed that our legislation allows cruise ships to use fuel that has 3500 times the sulphur level permitted for use in diesel cars and thirty-five times greater than the level permitted in European ports.   It is a fact of life that ships engines are not designed to reduce emissions because they spend most of their time away from land and sailing the worlds oceans.

These same cruise ships that visit Sydney also dock in other world ports where stricter emission rules apply.  We need to bring our port requirements to world standards but it is a serious omission that we have a cruise ship terminal that lacks shore to ship electrical facilities.  It sounds as if this parliamentary enquiry delivered a finding that suited the politicians !