Posted on October 10, 2017
By David Weber, ABC
Leading cruise company Carnival Australia has announced Fremantle will be used as a home port for Princess Cruises after an earlier threat to pull out.
The WA Government’s commitment to fix infrastructure issues helped seal the deal, which will see the redeployment of Sun Princess, with 2,000 guests.
Speaking on sister ship Sea Princess, Premier Mark McGowan said he became aware of the problems after being elected.
“They’d been making submissions to the former government for a considerable period and there’d been no action,” he said.
“It turned out one of the major issues was the dredging of the channel into Broome Port.
“The other was pulling up in Geraldton, there was a problem with what’s called the shore tensioning units.”
The Premier said shore tension units had been installed and dredging would occur at Broome next year to allow all-tide access.
Loss of ships ‘would have cost $135m’
Stuart Allison, Princess Cruises’ vice president for Australia and New Zealand, said the topic of better access to ports was an issue around Australia.
Mr Allison said the five Sun Princess cruises in October and November next year could be the start of bigger things.
“Ultimately our long-term ambition is to bring even larger ships to Western Australia,” he said.
“Be it the 3,000-guest Ruby Princess, which will be based in Australia from later 2019. Or even the flagship of the Princess fleet, the Majestic Princess — 3,500 guests — which will be based in Sydney from September of next year.
“But we can only start to make those decisions about bringing those ships to Western Australia and to Broome when we know that those tidal issues are no longer a concern to us.”
WA Tourism Minister Paul Papalia said the knock-on effect would have been devastating if Fremantle had lost homeporting of Carnival Australia-managed ships.
“The impact of that would’ve been in a couple of year’s time a reduction of regional port visits by two thirds, and a loss of $135 million of spend,” he said.
“What we’re talking about today is huge for Fremantle and for the regions. By way of example, this ship has 2,000 passengers, 30 per cent of those passengers have come from interstate, and 12 per cent have come from overseas.”
Mr Papalia said he was confident environmental approvals would be given for the dredging at Broome, and said the operation itself would only take a couple of days.
Regional Development Minister Rita Saffioti said the Government also expected to make an announcement about plans for Fremantle’s South Quay and Passenger Terminal before Christmas.
Source: ABC
