Tuesday, 18 February 2025

West Gate Tunnel

David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan) (17:44): (1406) My adjournment is directed to the Minister for Environment and relates to the West Gate Tunnel ventilation stacks. The western suburbs of Melbourne are more impacted by air pollution than any other region in the state. Diesel emissions from trucks – a toxic cocktail of chemicals, black carbon and heavy metals – are the leading cause of respiratory illness in the west, including asthma, with rates in the west being 70 per cent higher than the state average. For local residents these risks will increase with the opening of the West Gate Tunnel, with an estimated 70,000 trucks using the tunnel every day; however, the installation of air filtration on the tunnels ventilation stacks would make a tangible difference in reducing residents’ exposure to emissions – all for what the former Premier described to locals as ‘a mere rounding error’ in the overall cost of the project. The decision to forgo filtration was made by the then Minister for Planning Richard Wynne in 2017, who was apparently unconvinced of its cost effectiveness. If the government is unconcerned by the human suffering generated by these airborne poisons, the savings in primary health care alone would more than justify the cost.

The updated Environment Protection Act 2017 mandates a preventative focus to address harms to health that may be cumulative and arise from a range of factors, so it is likely that the EPA would now advise to install those filters. Filtration can be added to the ventilation stack at a later stage but now is the time to install them. Practically, it is unrealistic and it is undesirable to shut down the tunnel when it is up and running to install those filters. But more importantly, why would this government consciously poison its own citizens for the cost of a mere rounding error? And if the government imagines that at some stage these filters will be retrofitted if necessary, as has been said, how is that going to work? Are we going to count kids admitted to the ED at the new Footscray Hospital with asthma attacks or wait for an obvious uptick in lung cancer deaths, or will the government wake up? The results of the Werribee by-election were a lot more than a mere rounding error, and if the government has really started to listen to the west, they should be able to hear loud and clear what the residents are demanding: stop poisoning our kids and install the damn filters.

Transurban is in the process of applying for a licence to operate the tunnel, so the action I seek is for the minister to guarantee that no operating licence will be granted to Transurban until air filtration has been fitted to the West Gate Tunnel ventilation stacks.