Stephen Bates (Brisbane, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I second the amendment. Back in the seventies, the International Air Transport Association, the IATA, came up with an airline slot system to reduce airport congestion. The initial aim was to regulate and improve the air traffic flow during busy travel times at busy airports. Some airports in Australia fall into the category that this system regulates.

It's supposed to be a 'use it or lose it' system, where airlines have to use their slots at least 80 per cent of the time, or they become available to other airlines. But over time we've seen airlines manipulate the system by slot hoarding. This is a practice whereby airlines schedule a flight and then cancel it closer to the date of departure. This makes it look like they're using their allocated slots so that they don't lose them. It's anticompetitive, keeps competition out and keeps fares higher. It's also incredibly frustrating for customers because they are having constant schedule changes and cancellations of their flights. We absolutely need to reform slot compliance and enforcement and make transparency mandatory. We cannot have a system whereby slots are hoarded by airlines and managed by airlines. It makes zero sense.

But let's zoom out for a moment. There is so much more that needs to be done to fix the root issues of the aviation industry in Australia. It's a highly monopolised, highly concentrated market. The likes of Qantas and Virgin are after corporate profit while the interests of consumers, workers and communities take a back seat. During the previous government, the Liberals and Nationals gave $2.7 billion in taxpayer subsidies to Qantas, and, in exchange, what did Qantas do? They fired 10,000 workers. And the High Court found that 1,700 of those workers were fired illegally. We fast forward to the 2022-23 financial year, and Qantas recorded a record profit of $2.47 billion. They paid no income tax, and of course they've made no mention of repaying any of the billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies that the coalition handed out to them. If we are going to hand over that volume of money to private companies, the very least we should get in return is a stake in them. The Sydney Airport Demand Management Amendment Bill 2024 makes changes to the slot regime at Sydney airport to ensure viability of operations. It also works alongside the Sydney Airport Demand Management Act, which opposes a curfew between 11 pm and 6 am, as well as hourly caps on aircraft movements. It's not a perfect set-up, but inner Sydney will remain protected, by the curfew and these caps, from the worst of flight noise.

Excessive noise pollution has serious health impacts, so much so that an independent health assessment into the third runway at Melbourne's Tullamarine airport showed potential six-month developmental delays in children due to excessive aircraft noise. This bill once again raises the question: why is such a scheme good enough for the Prime Minister's electorate, in Sydney, but not good enough for our community in Brisbane or for Melbourne or for Western Sydney? I've met with countless constituents that are seriously impacted by flight noise, especially with the long-haul heavy flights that land and take off at Brisbane in the middle of the night. I encourage the Labor government to vote with the Greens to pass our amendment to ensure that our Brisbane community have the same protections that are afforded to communities in Sydney.

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