Stuart Henry (Hasluck, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate the opportunity today to speak against the proposal by BGC to lease land from Westralia Airports Corporation and build a brickworks immediately adjacent to Perth Airport in an area which was once the home of the West Aviat community golf club. Many thousands of people in the electorate of Hasluck and adjacent areas have a shared view: this brickworks is not wanted, not welcome and must not be built. This is clearly a brickworks in the wrong place. Local residents have good cause for concern. This brickworks will produce significant emissions of hydrogen chloride, hydrogen fluoride and sulphur dioxide gases, which will dump many tonnes of pollution over the area immediately surrounding the brickworks.

An earlier report produced by the Western Australian Department of Environment found that exposure to these types of acid gas emissions has caused adverse health effects, chronic respiratory ailments, itchy eyes and other sensitivities. Parents are greatly concerned about the future health of their children as there are over seven schools within 3,000 metres of the proposed brickworks site. One, the Matthew Gibney Catholic Primary School, is within 1,000 metres. Parents have an expectation that their children will go to school in a safe environment. The Middle Swan Primary School was closed as a direct result of odour and health issues associated with emissions from brickworks. The health and wellbeing of our children should be our first consideration.

Within a few hundred metres of the brickworks site, work is under way to establish an extensive aged care and retirement village. What effect will these noxious emissions from the brickworks have on senior citizens? Three local government areas are all strongly opposed to this development—the City of Belmont, the City of Swan and the Shire of Kalamunda. Kalamunda is extremely concerned about the impact heavy-haulage trucks will have on the single-lane Kalamunda Road, particularly through the small community of High Wycombe, and how this will impact on local safety and amenity.

There is no doubt that the proposed BGC Brickworks will adversely affect the lifestyle of some 14,000 home owners and their families; create traffic congestion with serious safety issues and loss of amenity; place the wellbeing of local residents in jeopardy, including that of young children; and destroy the ecology and local habitat of the western brown bandicoot and the feeding grounds of the endangered Carnaby’s black cockatoo. This proposal will have significant social, health and environmental ramifications in our community and I urge the Minister for Transport and Regional Services and the Minister for the Environment and Heritage to reject it outright.

I support a petition that I have and request that the government, consistent with the wishes of over 5,000 signatories, reinstate that area of precinct 3A previously occupied by the West Aviat community golf club to the club and, in so doing, create an effective buffer zone between the airport, future development and residential areas. This petition has been duly checked and stamped by the Clerk and I seek leave to table it.

Leave granted.

The petition read as follows—

To the honourable the Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives assembled in parliament.

The petition of certain residents in the state of Western Australia draw to the attention of the House to the rezoning of Precinct 3A (part of Perth Airport Master Plan) from recreational to warehouse and showroom, which Westralia Airport Corporation has used as an excuse to evict West Aviat Golf Club, which has existed since 1973, on land granted by DOT in 1979.

Your petitioners therefore pray that the House to influence the Minister for Transport, to rezone Precinct 3A back to recreational, and reinstate West Aviat Community Golf Club, and thereby the buffer zone, between the airport and South Guildford houses.

from 10 citizens.

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