The phrase ‘Aussie Battler’ springs to mind when I think of the people of Sunbury.
I have been with them from day one and witnessed firsthand their determination in a David and Goliath fight against the stinking incinerator planned for their suburb.
The proposed HiQ massive waste incinerator at 570 Sunbury Road, Bulla, would burn up to 750,000 tonnes of rubbish every year — around 40-50 times more than the entire Hume region produces.
If approved, it would run 24 hours a day, seven days a week for the next 30 years. This would happen within cooee of homes, schools and creeks, locking the community into decades of toxic outputs.
The people of Sunbury aren’t throwing away anything close to the three-quarters of a million tonnes of rubbish every year earmarked for this site. The total landfill produced by the Hume LGA is 14,000–20,000 tonnes, so I guess we’re going to be trucking in an additional 736,000 tonnes from all over the state to keep feeding our very hungry incinerator.
There is a very strong feeling in Sunbury that they are treated as Melbourne’s dumping ground. Let’s remember that it was Sunbury where the government dumped that PFAS-contaminated soil from the West Gate Tunnel.
Every day as people drive along Sunbury Road, they can look over at that man-made mountain of soil as a testament to the high regard in which the government appears to hold them.
Now, to add insult to injury, they are being asked to accept a toxic dumpster fire on a monstrous scale. It is time that the government woke up and smelled the garbage, because the incinerators proposed for Sunbury, for Lara, for Wollert and for Dandenong are nothing short of a disgrace, and it stinks.
Did the government think that they could just wave this through before people had time to understand what was happening and raise objections?
They did not reckon on the speed with which this group could grow from a handful of concerned residents to a fully-fledged community movement.
From highway vigils in the freezing Melbourne winter to rallies at Parliament House, the No Sunbury Waste Incinerator Campaign has continued to hold this government’s toes to the coals. Their campaign has been so successful, even Labor politicians are following suit.
A rare achievement for a movement started by a handful of committed activists.
What started off as a snowball has turned into an avalanche; the campaign now has 3,500 members on Facebook alone. A check by the community against the government’s hubris.
I’ve been involved in many community campaigns, spanning decades, and I’ve never seen anything quite like what’s happened in Sunbury.
The Economy and Infrastructure Committee’s inquiry into Waste to Energy will release its final report by the end of the month, and the government will have only a short amount of time to respond. I hope they get it right.
By David Ettershank, Member for Western Metropolitan Region.
You can find more information at davidettershank.com.au or by contacting his office on (03) 9317 5900
