Council strip bid for port revealed

Hamish Heard
City Hall is set to strip residents near Geelong’s port of rights to appeal potentially dangerous chemical storage facilities on their doorsteps, according to a group fighting the proposal.
And members have accused a senior City Hall officer of misleading ratepayers over denials third party appeal rights would be waived under council’s soontobeadopted port structure plan.
Terminals consultative committee member Sue McLean said she was “appalled” after legal advice revealed residents would not be allowed to appeal against chemical facilities that fell within a port master plan.
“Unless you have a good legal knowledge of a specific area of thirdparty appeal rights, it’s not clear to the general public that stripping those rights away is what council is proposing,” Ms McLean said.
City Hall’s general manager for development sustainability, Kate Sullivan, earlier told the public at a council meeting that appeal rights would be retained following implementation of the plan.
“There is no proposal to take away thirdparty appeal rights in relation to the structure plan,” Ms Sullivan told the meeting in response to a question from community activist Gordon Alderson.
But Ms McLean said the city’s planning strategy manager, Terry Demeo, later let the cat out of the bag at a Terminals consultative committee meeting.
“I asked him straight up whether he could confirm the port structure plan would take away thirdparty appeal rights,” Ms McLean said.
“His response was that is absolutely correct.”
Ms McLean said Mr Demeo told the committee he had prepared a written response for Ms Sullivan to read out at the council meeting.
“He said he was very surprised Kate Sullivan had replied there was no plan to take away thirdparty appeal rights because he had supplied her a written response to the question that was going to be asked in the meeting,” she said.
A City Hall spokesperson said Ms Sullivan had not understood Mr Alderson’s question when she denied thirdparty appeal rights would be stripped under the structure plan.
“She was responding to what she understood to be an inquiry related to the port structure plan process rather than a question that related to the intent of the planning controls contained within the port structure plan,” the spokesperson said.