Max Chandler-Mather (Griffith, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I second the bill. Brisbane now suffers from the worst flight noise in Australia. The opening of the second runway in 2020 has been having an enormously detrimental impact on people's sleep, health and wellbeing across Brisbane suburbs. Airservices Australia's last annual report showed more complaints for Brisbane Airport than all other major Australian airports combined. Despite thousands of residents' participation in official government processes, complaints and reviews, the government has only offered token consultation and window-dressing.

The Brisbane Airport Curfew and Demand Management Bill 2023 will force real change to curb flight noise; introduce reasonable restrictions, including implementing a night-time curfew on flights from 10 pm to 6 am so that residents can get a good night's sleep; a total cap on flights at 45 flights per hour to manage relentless noise throughout the day; and a new long-term operating plan to prioritise more flights over the water. Noise reduction mechanisms like this are already in place and providing relief for other communities near airports across Australia, including at Sydney airport, which has had both a cap and a curfew since 1997. Obviously, it hasn't stopped Sydney from being a thriving world city—and with some of the cheapest flights in the country. The Prime Minister himself was a strong advocate for noise reduction when it was affecting his own inner Sydney seat. If a cap and curfew on flights is good enough for Sydney, then it should be good enough for residents of Brisbane.

It can be hard, I think, for people not living directly under the flight paths to appreciate how severely impacted residents are by this issue, particularly while the airport and government are working overtime to tell people there's no problem. As one constituent in Griffith, Erin, told me: 'The constant waking through the night from the noise is affecting our health and wellbeing. We have a small two-bedroom Queensland cottage and the noise from the planes rattles our entire house when a plane goes over, and we are struggling to even hear each other talk. My toddler is absolutely terrified and now constantly waking all through the night from the ridiculously loud planes at all hours.' Megan, who lives in Dutton Park, told me: 'Each night I am constantly woken by airplanes over our home, particularly around 2 am to 3 am. Then from 5.50 am to 7 am we have a constant stream of low-flying aircraft over our home—almost every three minutes. In the evenings, the aircraft fly over constantly between 7.30 pm to almost midnight. The planes rattle our windows and we cannot hear each other speak, nor the television—particularly for my four-year-old who enjoys a bit of ABC Kids. The disrupted sleep every night is unbearable. When we purchased our home there was next to no aircraft noise. One day it was like a switch: the aircraft noise started and it has never stopped.'

There are thousands of stories like this across the community. That the minister for infrastructure and transport is now refusing to meet with the community campaigners advocating for change is shameful; I am certain that the airport corporation has no trouble getting access. We know that Brisbane Airport Corporation's ambition is to double flights over the city by 2035. What's worse is that the government's own aviation green paper predicts a tripling of flight movements by 2050. This is just madness when we consider the impacts of noise, air pollution and CO2 emissions. You would think that instead of tripling flight movements by 2050, we might instead be finally building high-speed rail in this country, connecting three of the busiest air routes in the world and decarbonising our travel. But since the sell-off of our major airports and the national carrier in the nineties, we've now created a powerful corporate lobby group who have fought to protect any threats, like noise protections or high-speed rail, from growing their profits.

At the end of the day, this is a fight led by everybody: by people standing up against the greed of big corporations and against Labor and the coalition, who are held captive by the airline corporations. The Greens will always stand with the people in that fight. The community is tired of playing by airports rules, tired of being lied to and tired of giving up their lives to participate in endless technical reviews and sham consultations that go nowhere.

I commend this bill to the House. I hope that the government listens.

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