Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Turnbull government continues with its con job consultation around Badgerys Creek airport. Here is the latest instalment of this fake consultation, with the added twist that it might actually kill off general aviation in the Sydney Basin. The protagonists are all of the aviation businesses running out of Bankstown and Camden airports whose future is threatened by the plans for an airport at Badgerys Creek. Our antagonists are the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and the Minister for Urban Infrastructure, who have locked out those stakeholders from important deliberations over the future of aviation in Sydney.

Stunningly, the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association of Australia was not given a seat on the Forum on Western Sydney Airport—or, as I like to call it, the Friends of Western Sydney Airport. It is populated largely with cheerleaders and only a few people who will actually treat this process seriously, including my friend and colleague the member for Werriwa. Deputy Speaker, you cannot lock out an association like that; you only lock out an association with 3,000 members if you do not want to hear what they have to say.

Any new airport will greatly impact on the livelihoods of many general aviation businesses operating out of Bankstown and Camden. Of the three flight models provided in the EIS for Badgerys Creek airport, AOPA believes two of them would effectively end all instrument flights from Bankstown Airport—finished, over. That would almost certainly spell the end of pilot training out of Bankstown Airport, yet this association is not given a spot on FOWSA.

The government is engaging in fake consultation over this airport. They want to push it through without public debate and they do not care about aviation businesses affected because those businesses dare to do something other than toe the government line. The infrastructure minister will not even meet with AOPA. This is a joke! The Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development is supposed to work with Airservices Australia to develop flightpaths, airspace management and configurations for the new airport, but when AOPA ask Airservices Australis for information about these plans they are told to speak to the department. When they ask the department for information about airspace planning they are not given any information either. So the coalition is only pro-business when those businesses are pro-coalition. In order for those businesses to plan for their future they have to be included in any planning. It is that simple. Without inclusion they perhaps face closure.

The reason the department contracted out flightpath development and did not contract Airservices Australia is to ensure that meaningful consultation was not provided for with affected communities. The government and department are knowingly excluding Airservices Australia because they want to build this airport to such a point that it is impossible to accommodate community concern. They are deliberately and knowingly misleading communities and keeping them in the dark. It will be too late to correct this when Western Sydney communities realise what is actually happening.