Make naval base a garden of tourism
does anyone else not understand why its the navys problem that sydney doesnt have enough berthing space?
I screamed abuse when i read this today...F%^K OFF CLOVER MOORE AND EVERYONE ELSE WANTING GARDEN ISLAND!
This is getting frigging pathetic, everytime someone talks about cruise liners, they look over at GI and go, "lets park there"
The funniest part is that they require the berth between october and march...these periods are normally the end of the year, when ships are home and heading to maintanence and RAP. So by the plans they want, we have to move our ships to make room(with choules now, and LPAs still berthed, as well as LHD incoming, 4 FFG, success,tobruk, 3 FFH) where the Frak do you park a 300m frigging cruise liner!?!
heres the breakdown of FBE. 4 260m berths starting at harrys, then a broken up 1Nth, 1Sth which holds choules, or 2 frigates. West wall can hold any ship(except choules i believe) and then theres GI with two berths, and east wall occasionally.
Now if you look at the ship numbers(12) and number of berthing spaces(9) you would gather outboard berthing is available, but when we do this, we have an issue of maintanence, where craning off equipment that needs to be repaired or have annuals conducted. cold moving vessels to conduct this is expensive(tugs) and annoying as hell for crew and work in progress.
When the fleet returns this year the base will be at capacity(you can see this in Nov) and it will mean very limited movement for space. When the cruise company wants to use the base(oct-Mar) includes Reduced Activity Period, where the ships go to min manning and movement will be limited, and i truely could not mention the pain in recalling crew during RAP to move ships, as well as the expense for flights booked across the country, or crew overseas on holiday.
This yet again is another dumb move by people who have no idea what they are talking about, and see the prime real estate value of Garden island, and not the fact its Fleet Base East. Its becoming a more common push with people who have access to the media to complain about the navy and have them removed.
Besides the sheer cost of moving the fleet north to a "supposed new base" in brisbane, the cost of building such a facility, then having the support companies for defence move, as well as people, families and alike is not worth it. We would look at nearly $2billion dollars to defence itself, and alot of companies shifting workers or cancelling their positions in sydney, and re opening in brisbane, so either move your family or get a new job for these people.
Familes would be destroyed, as over the navy is married, or partnered. and would require uplifting them.
This is becoming more and more pathetic an argument, and would require the one person who can talk in the public and defend the navy, but hes currently at war with the department. If either himself, or the PM could step up and shut it down, and announce more funding to replace half the buildings(they need to be replaced now or 10 years ago, its pretty poor of a standard) so that we could show faith in FBE. This is what we need, what we get is silence, which is golden to the detractors.
locals dont seem to comment on that much.
