John Murphy (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, you have just listened tonight to the member for Cook's speech calling for a second airport for Sydney. I am heartened by the member for Cook bringing this to the parliament because I agree with him that the status quo cannot continue, but that is where my agreement with the member for Cook stops. All this humbug, cant, hypocrisy and double standards about the second airport has to stop. Very recently the Premier of New South Wales suggested that the second airport for Sydney, the gateway to Australia, should be here in Canberra in the national capital. This is outrageous. He suggested we can build and would like to have a very fast train. But, of course, he had no regard for the cost of something in the order of $20 to $30 million per kilometre for a fast train, as if that would resolve the problem of a second airport for Sydney.

The Premier is living in fantasyland. I suggest that the member for Cook get behind the member for Grayndler—who knows something about aircraft noise and happens to be the transport minister—in supporting the push for a second airport to be sited at Wilton, some 20 kilometres south of Campbelltown. It is an appropriate place for a second airport, subject to a rigorous EIS. Badgerys Creek is not an option for the Labor Party for a second airport for Sydney.

Alarmingly, the member for Cook wants to have the long-term operating plan revisited. Tonight he advised that chamber that he wants a long-term operating plan Mark II. You would have heard me speak in this chamber over the last almost 14 years on many occasions about the Howard government's long-term operating plan which they went to in the 1996 election and the 1998 election and which committed to aircraft movements to the north of Sydney airport at 17 per cent. The people I represent and the people the member for Grayndler represents—and I notice the member for Sydney here in the chamber tonight, and I notice the previous speaker, the member for Bennelong—have to endure air-traffic movements double what was promised under the Howard government, and they never, ever had any intention of honouring a commitment to the people of Sydney that they would do something to alleviate aircraft noise.

For almost 40 years now, since the MANS report, we have been talking about the need for a second airport in Sydney, and we cannot get bipartisan support. Worse, I have just had to suffer the member for Cook coming in here tonight, and the member for North Sydney was also there—he is a former chair of the Sydney Airport Community Forum, he understands the issues and he knows that there has to be a bipartisan approach to this because by the year 2020 Sydney Airport is going to be stuffed. We need a second airport, not only in the economic interests of the state of New South Wales and our great country but also to alleviate the unbearable burden of aircraft noise, particularly over the inner-west of Sydney. It is having such an injurious effect to the people not only who I represent but also those who the member for North Sydney, the member for Bennelong, the member for Sydney and the member for Cook, to the south of Sydney Airport, represent that something has to be done.

I have a message for the member for Cook, and he can convey that to Premier Barry O'Farrell: he has to stop the politics, wake up to himself and get behind the member for Grayndler and transport minister in supporting a rigorous EIS for a second airport at Wilton, because that is the obvious place to have a second airport. With the way we are going with the coalition they will never get an airport in Canberra; they will have a second airport for Sydney out at Broken Hill. It is absolutely farcical! I applaud the efforts of the member for Grayndler in pushing for the second airport because the Sydney—(Time expired)