Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I've started the 46th Parliament in much the same way as I started the 45th Parliament: that is, by asking the relevant minister to appoint me to the Forum on Western Sydney Airport. FOWSA is the only way my community finds out about the plans for Sydney's second airport—well, that and TheDaily Telegraph. Information about the government's plans is hidden behind what has turned into a veneer of community consultation, because, while we have a community member supposedly representing the mountains, that person is invisible to most people, and information being shared in between annual public drop-in sessions is virtually non-existent. What's more, the information people really want—the information about what the thinking is on flight paths—is non-existent.

What independent research is showing about the noise the planes will make is that it has been vastly underestimated by the government's own environmental impact statement. This independent research is not based on modelling. It's based on accurately measuring the actual noise planes make flying to and from Sydney Airport at heights similar to those predicted for the mountains and Western Sydney.

The only flight paths for the second Sydney airport we've been shown were in the EIS, and it painted a frightening picture of planes flying into Badgerys Creek 24 hours a day over the lower Blue Mountains, and at lower altitudes for take-offs over suburbs in Sydney's west like St Clair. Engineers Eric Ancich and Don Carter measured planes as they flew over Pymble and Parramatta—similar distances from Sydney airport. The results show that the computer modelling done for the EIS fails to take into account the actual range of heights that aircraft fly at and therefore underestimates how noisy they are. What the results show is that the noise is likely to be three to four times louder than the estimates in the EIS claim for the lower Blue Mountains—three to four times!

The department of infrastructure and Airservices know about this variability. They know that, where it's estimated that a plane flies at 3,000 feet, they actually have a range of 2,500 to 5,000 feet. These noise measurements by Ancich and Carter, based on real flights, flying in real time, are obviously relevant to daytime flights, because Sydney Airport has a curfew, which the second Sydney airport won't. The planes will fly through the night, nonstop, and they will be even noisier. Whether you think the airport is a great idea or, like me, you have serious concerns about its impact, the community should be fully informed. Australia has already told the World Heritage Committee that the airport might result in 'some noise impacts on amenity within the property'. In other words, it's going to have an impact. A deceptive EIS, underestimating the heights, does not do this government proud.