Residents of town outside of Melbourne protest freight terminal plans
Hundreds of residents from the small town of Little River, south-west of Melbourne, today gathered to rally against plans to build a large freight terminal. Opponents say the multi-billion-dollar project will threaten precious native grassland and increase truck traffic. But the developer says the proposal will create jobs and take trucks off the road.
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00:00This is how high opponents say the stacks of shipping containers could be, at the flat
00:08Grassy site near the town of Little River, on the road between Melbourne and Geelong.
00:12It's an environmental obscenity, it's a financial craziness, it makes no sense.
00:19Protesters say if the proposed freight terminal, put forward by Australian rail freight operator
00:25Pacific National, goes ahead, it will put local ecosystems, including some endangered
00:30species, at risk.
00:32You have Victoria with less than 1% of native western volcanic grasslands left and they
00:39want to turn it into a container park.
00:41The government has designated this area as green wedge and so to allow something like
00:46this to go ahead is really quite contradictory.
00:49The protesters say native grasslands like these aren't just disappearing here in Little
00:54River, but across Melbourne's urban fringe.
00:57They say the proposed development on this site would be about the size of 355 MCGs.
01:03There just isn't that much left that we can afford to have this happen.
01:08The proposed terminal would connect Melbourne's western freight zone to inland rail.
01:12Previously, Pacific National has said it wants it to be operational by 2026, but the project
01:19is yet to be approved.
01:22It has claimed it would take thousands of trucks off the road and could generate more
01:26than 4,000 jobs.
01:28It actually puts more trucks on the road, so you'll have 1,500 trucks coming from their
01:33warehouse down to here.
01:34Pacific National has already had some early setbacks, with the local council refusing
01:39early planning applications, those decisions set to be challenged at VCAT next month.
01:45The council is very concerned that we will lose this part of our country suburb.
01:50Pacific National didn't respond to the ABC's request for comment.