Kim Wilkie (Swan, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this important bill and to support my colleague the shadow minister for transport. Once again the shadow minister has done an excellent job in analysing this bill and carefully crafting the opposition’s response to ensure a balance between economic and community considerations.

The Airports Amendment Bill 2006 makes a number of changes to airport development arrangements. The bill amends the Airports Act to loosen the restriction on airlines owning smaller non-core regulated airports; incorporates explicitly the right of airport lessees to undertake non-aeronautical development as long as it is consistent with relevant airport master plans; sets out a purpose statement for airport master plans, ensuring a strategic focus, public information about intentions and land use compatibility; requires Australian noise exposure forecasts and flight paths to be included in master plans, and new master plans to be developed if noise forecasts change; allows for noise forecasts to extend beyond the 20-year planning horizon; reduces time lines for public comment on drafts and minor variations of master plans and major development plans; reduces time lines for ministerial approval from just under 13 weeks to between 10 and 11 weeks; requires free availability of information on airport websites; introduces a stop-clock provision in the ministerial approval time line if the minister requires additional information from the airport lessee company; requires the airport lessee company to demonstrate how it has due regard to public comment rather than simply stating that it has due regard; requires the minister to have regard to the extent to which a plan achieves the purpose of a final master plan; lifts the dollar threshold for the definition of ‘major airport development’ from $10 million to $20 million, reflecting both the very substantial escalation in construction costs today compared with 1997 and the new requirement for site works to be included in project costs, includes an appropriate cost inflation index in regulations; allows the minister to determine that the combined cost of consecutive or concurrent projects or extensions be included when deciding whether the cost of a proposal exceeds the threshold for major development projects; sets out a purpose statement for major development plans to ensure they are consistent with the airport lease and master plan, and requires the plan to include information in this regard; requires the impact of a development on flight paths to be stated; brings Canberra airport into line with the governance of other airports and removes it from the jurisdiction of the National Capital Plan; sets out a purpose statement for a final environmental strategy to ensure all operations are carried out in accordance with relevant environmental legislation and standards; establishes a framework for assessing compliance and promotes continual improvement of environmental management; removes the requirement for all core regulated airports to prepare audited accounts and provide quality of service information to the ACCC, and requires this only of airports specified in regulations; broadens the definition of a gambling activity; and allows the Australian Defence Force or persons approved by CASA to supply air traffic and fire and rescue services where currently these are provided by or approved by Airservices Australia. The bill also covers related matters of a minor nature and transitional arrangements.

Airports are vital hubs for business and tourism. They have enjoyed extraordinary growth in the last 10 years. It could be said without exaggeration that having a well-functioning airport catering to the needs of passengers and business alike is vital to the growth of our cities and regional centres. While the privatisation of airports through leasing has occurred, and the benefits of such privatisation have been clear in many cases, it is my view that airport land should remain in Commonwealth ownership and control. This is important to ensure that airport developments are consistent with the long-term growth of airport capacity. For example, while some airport land may be leased today for commercial development, it is inappropriate for it to be sold for that purpose because it may be required in the long term for further aeronautical expansion.

I am sure that none of us could have anticipated the huge growth in commercial development at airports that we have witnessed around Australia over the last decade. In my view, the rapid growth in non-aviation development is much needed to generate funds for future expansion and replacement of aviation infrastructure and improved quality of service at Australian airports. The funds generated from commercial development at airports will certainly remove what would otherwise be an enormous burden on taxpayers to deliver the essential aviation services that underpin our national economy. Nonetheless, airport development is a contentious community issue and nowhere more so than at Perth Airport in my electorate of Swan.

In my comments in this debate, I will focus on two aspects of airport development and management which have particular and significant implications for Perth Airport: firstly, the government’s attitude to airport development, particularly with regard to the development of a brickworks at Perth Airport; and, secondly, the financial relationship between Perth Airport and Belmont City Council. Other members have spoken about the BGC brickworks at Perth Airport. This development is causing considerable concern in the local community because of the proximity of that development to residential housing. In the context of the consideration of this bill, it is difficult to explain to a local community why on earth they should trust the planning regime for airports when the government has delivered a decision to place a significant brickworks facility in Perth on airport land and opposite housing.

The government’s decision to approve the brickworks is made all the more curious when you compare that decision with the decision of the Minister for Transport and Regional Services on 12 February this year to reject an application for a retail development at Sydney (Kingsford Smith) Airport. At that time, the minister stated that he rejected the Sydney airport development because of traffic and safety concerns. I believe the minister made the right call with that development and I commend him for it. But that decision is totally inconsistent with the decision by the minister’s hapless predecessor to approve the brickworks development at Perth Airport. This development needs further and serious consideration, given the local community’s concerns. But this government has thumbed its nose at the concerns of local communities in an arrogant and out-of-touch fashion. In fact, the brickworks construction has already commenced.

The problem is not so much with the planning regime but with the poor judgement of the government in failing to consider surrounding land uses in its decisions about commercial developments at airports. The government’s record on airport development means that we in the Labor Party are not prepared to accept any reductions in consultation or approval time lines. This is because in many respects the government’s management of airport planning issues has provoked significant distrust of the process. I believe that the minister and the government must have due regard to the concerns of local communities and the land use and infrastructure plans of local government authorities. Part of the problem is that a department specialising in transport is trying to make planning decisions when it has no expertise in this area.

I wish to respond in part to some of the remarks made on this very subject in this debate two weeks ago by the members for Hasluck and Canning. First, both members suggested that the state members for Belmont and Midland, the Hon. Eric Ripper and the Hon. Michelle Roberts, were responsible for the brickworks being built on federal land at Perth Airport. I have heard some rubbish in my time from those opposite, but blaming state members who totally opposed the proposal for the brickworks at Perth Airport, who actively campaigned against it and who had no responsibility for its approval or refusal takes the cake. As the members for Hasluck and Canning know, the decision to approve the brickworks lay totally and entirely with the federal minister for transport. In fact, both members have completely failed in their duties to their past and present constituents through their abject failure in preventing the minister for transport from approving inappropriate building applications on land at Perth Airport. This includes the brickworks, in the case of the member for Hasluck, and the building of a bitumen plant in Hazelmere, which the then member for Swan, the current member for Canning, at the time said he actively opposed but strangely now professes to support.

In this debate, the member for Canning raised a number of issues which he professed to have dealt with when he was the member for Swan from 1996 to 1998. The truth is that the then member for Swan failed to address any of them. For example, he referred to the issue of aircraft noise at Perth Airport and made the observation that ‘airport issues are very quiet these days’ and that those raising concerns about the airport were the same old detractors raising the same old issues. On the issue of aircraft noise, I remind the member that this was a very important issue when he was the member for Swan. I vividly remember that a group in Queens Road in South Guildford, which at that time was located in the federal electorate of Perth, was arguing through the member for Perth for assistance with this problem because their homes were very close to the end of the main runway. The now member for Canning claimed that these residents had no claim to anything, that they purchased their homes knowing that they were in the flight path and that the person leading the fight for the residents was a Labor Party apparatchik.

The problem for the member for Canning was that not long after he had made these claims there was a redistribution of federal electoral boundaries around Queens Road and these residents were moved into the electorate of Swan. Oh, how he changed his tune then! In fact, the lady he claimed was a Labor Party apparatchik was not even a member of the Labor Party.

While noise still remains an issue, one of the reasons concerns about noise are not quite as acute as they were is that the Labor Party has made commitments that homes dramatically affected by noise, such as those in Queens Road, would be eligible for assistance under a noise amelioration program such as that which operates in Sydney. Perth Airport has a noise management committee which looks at all noise related issues, including aircraft flight paths. A number of years ago I successfully argued that representatives from local government and the community be included on that committee. I am pleased that the airport included those representatives and that the committee is operating effectively.

During his address on this bill, the now member for Canning also said he disagreed with the member for Hasluck over his opposition to the brickworks as it was located nowhere near houses. In fact, the brickworks are located approximately 150 metres from houses across the Great Eastern Highway bypass road. It should come as no surprise to any member of this House that the member for Canning lost the seat of Swan and then had to relocate to Canning in 2001.

The member for Canning also decided to criticise Senator Glenn Sterle, who has been actively campaigning against the brickworks, about the circumstances of his preselection. People in glass houses should not throw stones. The member for Canning’s own branch-stacking antics in the lead-up to the 1996 election are legendary. In the 1993 election, local Belmont vet Dr Bryan Hilbert ran for Swan for the Liberal Party. He came within some 200 votes of defeating the now member for Brand. But sensing that there could be a change in the Labor Party’s fortunes in 1996, Don Randall, assisted by his mate Noel Crichton-Browne, then decided to stack the branches in the Swan division of the Liberal Party and claim preselection for himself, despite the fact that Dr Hilbert still wanted to contest the seat and had put in the hard yards.

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