Prime Minister Scott Morrison is being urged to consider Garden Island as the spot for a new Sydney cruise ship terminal amid claims one at Yarra Bay would destroy a centuries-old Aboriginal heritage site.
Garden Island was named the most suitable location for a new terminal to solve the city's cruise ship crisis in a 2017 report by former navy officer and NSW Liberal leader Peter Collins.
Its necessity is due to the fact a single berth at Circular Quay doesn't meet industry needs and many modern liners can't pass under Sydney Harbour Bridge to dock at White Bay.
However Garden Island was ruled out a year after Mr Collins' report by then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who said it would remain a naval base.
Instead, the NSW government is looking at the viability of two potential sites at Molineaux Point and Yarra Bay at Port Botany.
La Perouse Aboriginal Land Council chair Noelene Timbery Source: SBS News
Residents, state and federal Labor MPs and the local Aboriginal Land Council met at Yarra Bay on Sunday to protest the potential development.
"Why would you go and destroy this significant Aboriginal heritage, this bay that would have to be dredged again and this local community when the infrastructure already exists in Sydney Harbour?" Labor's Matt Thistlewaite told reporters.
State MP Michael Daley said the decision not to use Garden Island was an example of "political bastardry" and building a new terminal at Yarra Bay was a far more expensive option for taxpayers.
He's calling on the government to make the contents of Mr Collins' report public, saying the fiasco was again showing the government's habit of "secrecy and financial fumbling".
Chairwoman of La Perouse Aboriginal Land Council Noeleen Timbery told reporters the community did not want a cruise ship terminal anywhere in the bay.
Federal Member for Kingsford Smith Matt Thistlethwaite and La Perouse Aboriginal Land Council chair Noelene Timbery are seen during a media press conference Source: AAP
"We've watched as our cultural landscape has been developed and redeveloped and developed again, so our question is really simple, when are our cultural rights going to be respected because I reckon that should start now," she said.
"Over the last one-and-a-half years not one Aboriginal person has been spoken to. This is a sham consultation."
However chief executive of Port Authority NSW Philip Holliday says it's still early days, with his organisation and the government only at the stage of preparing a business case for potential terminals.
He's encouraging those with concerns to come forward so their views can be included in the information that will help the government make it's final decision.
Residents, state and federal Labor MPs and the local Aboriginal Land Council met at Yarra Bay on Sunday to protest the potential development. Source: SBS News
"People are understandably concerned at the moment that we don't appear to be saying much but it genuinely is because we're very early on," he told AAP.
"We are genuinely interested in questions rather than trying to make up answers."
Mr Holliday says the business case is expected to be finished around the middle of 2020 and that the government will make a decision in the second half of the year.
