BY ANDREW SULLIVAN
PERTH — Western Australia has had more than its fair share of controversial coastal development issues over the last decade.
The national spotlight has mostly focused on a proposal to build a resort and marina at Maud's Landing alongside the world heritage rated Ningaloo Reef Marine Park. The remarkable turnout of 15,000 people at the "Save Ningaloo" rally in Fremantle last year was testimony to the passion of Australians when it comes to protecting our coast. Whether Premier Geoff Gallop's WA Labor government shares this passion is about to be tested on more than one front.
Western Australians have a history of rallying to save their fragile coast in the same way Tasmanians protest to save their wilderness. Three years ago, a similar show of people power erupted when 10,000 Perth residents rallied at Leighton Beach. They forced Richard Court's Liberal-led government to call a halt to plans to sell to developers 17 hectares of absolute coastal foreshore. More importantly, they heralded in a new era of coastal planning awareness in the community.
Given WA's vast and relatively undeveloped coastline, perhaps it is not unreasonable to expect that the state's land-use planners will sometimes get it wrong and let dodgy developments slip through. Likewise, it's always going to be difficult to establish the right balance between the sometimes competing desire to live near the beach, on the one hand, and the need to protect recreational access and the coastal environment on the other. While these are difficult issues to resolve, coastal planning problems in WA run far deeper than just balancing competing needs.
Hot spots
The average West Aussie will tell you that there must be several kilometres of coastline available for every resident in WA. There remains a wild-west mentality that everyone is entitled to carve off a large slice of the coast for themselves and their mates. Surprisingly, the reality is quite different. There is just 10 metres of beach available for each Sandgroper.
Of course, when everyone is crammed into a small stretch of land around the south-west corner of the state, the pressure on this valuable resource increases dramatically. Suddenly, the coastal abundance that we take for granted is under threat in many metropolitan and south-west areas of WA.
The problem is not that good beaches are being overused by the community. The real threat stems from planning agencies and successive governments that systematically ignore their own coastal planning policies and allow developments to encroach too close to the foreshore areas. This in turn limits coastal access to a fortunate few, while the rest of us have to find another beach to go to.
The Coastal Planning Coalition, WA's peak coastal community group, has counted 23 contentious hot spots along the WA coast. For every issue, there is a community group struggling to hold the government and the developers at bay — or more accurately, trying to get them to set development back from the bay in question.
With the scrapping of the Maud's Landing proposal at Ningaloo, another major battle is looming right in the middle of the Labor Party's heartland state electorates of Fremantle and Cockburn.
The WA government is persisting with plans to build the Port Coogee Marina over a 1-kilometre stretch of Coogee Beach. This so-called "marina" extends 400 metres into the picturesque Cockburn Sound, and 70% of the sea-bed area is to be land-filled for housing — not too many boats in this marina!
But the regional community has drawn a line in the sand and want, as their bumper stickers proclaim: a "canal-free Coogee!".
WA Inc
Like the marina resort proposed for Ningaloo, the Port Coogee canal development is another bastard creation from the illegitimate dealings of government and business in the late 1980s. These were the "WA Inc" days when, as author and coastal stirrer Tim Winton described, "suddenly government was in business and business was in government".
This was when the white shoes of entrepreneurs like Christopher Skase and Alan Bond could be seen cruising the coast for their next big opportunity to import some Miami Vice-like development to our shores. As Winton laments, "the irony is that this took place under a Labor government. Not only that, the cabinet was probably the most talented in memory. Some of them are back in the job."
Since the 1980s, the developer spivs have taken control of the planning for our coast. Indeed, strategic "planning" in the true sense of the word, has been replaced by the developer's own planning and marketing machine. Today, strategic plans are massaged to fit the developer's concept.
The idea to build the so-called marina at Port Coogee had its initial public genesis in 1988 when the developer presented his plans to state cabinet. However, a year earlier, the government had released a strategy to remove noxious industries from this stretch of coast and had promised to upgrade all of the beaches and dunes. It had already committed to returning the entire foreshore area to the public. But following the winks of the developer at the cabinet meeting, the original strategic vision slowly began to unravel.
Initially, it was decided to investigate whether to replace a small section of coast, where sea walls had already ruined the beach, with a recreational boat harbour. By 1993, the Court Coalition government was employing the developer's own planning consultants to generate a new master plan for the area.
Not surprisingly, they recommended a proposal which was identical to the developer's own plans for the site. Not only were the sea walls to be swallowed up, but the adjacent white-sand beaches were to be lost as well. Worse still, rather than developing a genuine public boat harbour facility and without any of the required "investigation", much of the ocean was to be land-filled to create private housing lots.
The local community caught on to what was happening and complained about the loss of the promised continuous foreshore reserve. Likewise, the state's environment agency was not impressed, and neither were some of the officers within the state development department.
Ultimately, the developer's plans were just too controversial and the marina concept in the new master plan was never endorsed by government. Suddenly, the whole contentious deal looked all but dead.
Enter the Singapore-controlled Australand Holdings Ltd, one of the biggest developers of residential estates and canal developments in Australia.
Eyes on Gallop
With a new developer to the rescue and a Coalition government in power, the blurring of lines between the planners and the developers was rejuvenated. This time, the WA Planning Commission (WAPC) was given charge, but not to produce a new strategic plan as one would have expected. They were simply instructed to implement the developer's residential canal estate, subject of course to normal "environmental and planning approval".
The very agency that was supposed to be in charge of strategic and coastal planning was instantly compromised. Agreements were signed for the government to sell all of the land and the sea bed to Australand. Concept planning for the so-called marina continued without any meaningful strategic planning or any coastal planning assessments.
The Gallop Labor government has now inherited this poison chalice. After 14 years of concept planning with not one approval in place, the new government is finally set to consider whether to grant this project statutory environmental and planning approvals. But this time, the community is even better organised with the formation of the Coogee Coastal Action Coalition Incorporated (CCAC).
CCAC is demanding a proper coastal planning assessment be carried out. It wants to know why the government is so willing to give up 1.5 kilometres of coast when more than 60% of the beaches in the region have already been developed for marinas, boat building and heavy industry. It wants to know how the extra 100,000 people who will move into the region within 15 years will have access to the remaining public foreshore when it is already under pressure. It wants to know how filling in the ocean for new housing is going to satisfy the long-term demand for new boating facilities. Most of all, it wants an explanation for why the government should support a canal estate development built out over the ocean when it is so flagrantly inconsistent with the state's coastal planning polices.
At Port Coogee, as with the Ningaloo resort decision, the Gallop government has to decide whether the passage of time alone can somehow convey tacit approval to such a project. It must also decide whether to "honour" 15 years of corrupt coastal planning which has favoured the production of many fanciful concept plans, but no sound coastal planning. Or will it now finally divorce itself from these self-endorsed projects and restore some order and community confidence in the process of developing our coastline while protecting our coastal abundance?
[Andrew Sullivan is the spokesperson for the Coogee Coastal Action Coalition. For more information visit <http://www.iinet.net.au./~robret> or phone (08) 9433 3398.]
From Green Left Weekly, October 22, 2003.
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