Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Airports Amendment Bill 2018 is evidence of the government going in entirely the wrong direction. It is not a particularly bad bill, like many that we see in the Senate, nor is it a particularly punitive bill, like some we have seen this week—such as the cashless welfare card bill—but it is a bill that is going in the wrong direction. It is yet another example of government being entirely wedded to making things easy for incumbent businesses and those with access and power, rather than looking after the interests of ordinary people in the community.

I want to go through the changes that this bill makes. It wants to raise the threshold for airports needing to release major development plans. We already did this. In 2007, this parliament amended the act to raise the threshold from $10 million to $20 million. Why do we need to do it again?

What evidence does the government have that doing this is in the overall interests of the community? The major development plan process is a critical time for communities to be involved in the direction of airports and the impact that airports are going to have on them. It allows communities to see, comment on and engage with the activities of an airport and to ensure that their interests are protected. Why does the threshold need to be higher? It's only been a decade since we doubled the threshold, and here we are increasing it again. The government was proposing an increase to $35 million. It's good to see that it has been brought back to $25 million by amendments in the House. But the question remains: why are we going in this direction? What is the rationale for doing this?

It's the same with the airport master plans. The development of master plans, like with the major development plan process, is one of the very few periods where we as members of a community get to see the direction that an airport is heading in. It is our key chance to make comments and to have input into that vision. This is so important for local communities, local residents and, in fact, local governments which co-exist with airports. But here we have the government trying to extend the period for when airports need to issue master plans, which basically will make it more difficult for the community to engage and it will be less frequent.

I suppose, yes, we should be grateful that the legislation doesn't require the major airports in our four larger cities to have their master plan cycle changed from the current five-year cycle. But why do we need to extend it to eight years for all of our other federally leased airports? Okay, it's in the interests of the airports, but it is not in the interests of the local communities that are affected by those airports. The government, of course, says that it has consulted on these changes. For a bit of discussion about this I turned to the Bill's Digest, and we are told that in 2014, quite a while ago now, the then Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development circulated a discussion paper on efficiency proposals for the master plan and major development plan processes under the Airports Act—that is, this was the beginning of the process underpinning what this legislation is enacting today. This discussion paper was apparently distributed to a range of stakeholders who fed into a second discussion paper for consultation in May 2015. The second discussion paper set out a number of recommended better regulation proposals, many of which are contained in this bill.

So where are these discussion papers? Where are the submissions? They certainly don't seem to be publicly available. Why does the explanatory memorandum not mention this consultation process or show any details of that consultation, particularly given that consultation now happened over four years ago and it has taken this long to get to this stage of enacting the results of the recommendations in legislation? Given the lack of documentation it's impossible to confirm this, but perhaps it's actually not useful for this government to have such a smoking gun of them listening entirely to the interests of the industry over the interests of the community.

Although the government has wisely decided not to go ahead with this proposed change, the worst idea in the original bill was to allow a proposed reduction in the public comment period from 60 days to 15 days in the event that the minister merely remained silent rather than the minister actively having to decide to allow a shortened comment period. We note that the minister currently has the power to do this, but only when the development is consistent with the airport master plan and doesn't raise any issues that have a significant impact on the local or regional community. How ridiculous would that have been, that simply by standing to the side and remaining silent the minister could create a 75 per cent reduction in public comment time? It's very illustrative of the regard that this government has for community consultation. It's very telling who they are really serving. It's the big business, the aviation industry, over the interests of local residents. We know that from the fact that that measure could even have been proposed. So we're glad to see that amendments that passed the House removed this proposed change.

This attitude—governing in the interests of business, vested interests, political donors and their mates—feeds the alienation that's driving our politics. Average members of the public are feeling that the deck is stacked against them and that the people who government are really listening to are big business and their corporate mates. We hear a lot from this government about red tape and regulation driving up the cost of doing business. I've got news for this government: community consultation and public and social licence are not red tape; they're the very stock of goodwill that underpins our democracy. When we destroy the ability of the community to be informed and have their say we are building the basis for community discontent, public backlash and, ultimately, the politics of division and anger.

Recently, I was part of a Senate inquiry into my private senator's bill which would have amended the Air Services Act to require a much higher degree of consultation by airports and aviation operators, and which would have better protected communities from air noise. We developed the bill because, currently, communities affected by airports feel disempowered, left out and that their concerns are just being paid lip service to. They feel that the current consultative mechanisms do not achieve the aim of communities' concerns being listened to and acted on.

I want to share a few choice comments from the witnesses at the hearing we had in Melbourne. Frank Rivoli, from the Hume Residents Airport Action Group, said:

The issues we raise are dismissed by the airport operator, stakeholders, the Department of Infrastructure, Regional Development and Cities and Airservices, on the basis that the airport is an important piece of infrastructure and economic driver.

Frank said that since 2014, when he's been on the Community Aviation Consultation Group:

… it's made no recommendations which result in any worthwhile things for community, apart from some of the proposals to challenge some building proposals.

He continues:

Our concerns are not being addressed seriously. Aircraft noise answers are usually on the basis that there's nothing that can be done about aircraft noise. It's a product of aviation. Airservices says, 'We're doing our best to manage but our responsibility is to the safety of air travellers and so on'. They're the sorts of things.

It's just become too much for us. I resigned from this committee—

The consultative committee—

about three or four weeks ago on the basis that there is no point since that committee has removed the public from its deliberations.

'No point'. I know Frank, and I have met with him often about his concerns about the impact of Melbourne Airport on his community, on the suburbs of Gladstone Park, Tullamarine, Westmeadows and Broadmeadows. I know how genuine Frank is about acting for the benefit of his community. He's just the sort of person that governments and agencies rely on to give up their time and energy to be a conduit between them and the community. Our whole democracy relies on people like Frank. We know people are feeling disempowered about politics. They're cynical about politics. They're tuned out because they don't feel that anything they can do will make a difference. They feel that they lack agency.

When you have a person like Frank, who tries his best to be involved, to be active and to participate in our democracy, and he says: 'There's no point. I'm resigning from the community consultative committee,' and gives up after so many years of trying to be meaningfully involved, that is serious. It's particularly serious for communities such as those that Frank represents. They are working-class communities, very multicultural communities and very diverse. The people are often doing their best to juggle working and surviving on low incomes, struggling with unemployment and feeling isolated and unvalued by the broader community. To have people like Frank say that there is no point engaging is a travesty. To have people like Frank standing up to represent the communities is a gift to us.

Before standing for election to the Senate, I worked for a few years for Hume City Council, which covers the airport environs. I worked in the strategic planning department and I know how difficult it was to get people involved with the work that the council was doing. We ran workshops. We had leadership programs. We ran empowerment and community engagement programs to get people involved, to build social capital and to give them the sense that it was worthwhile engaging and that you could make a difference by being involved with activities that government was doing.

To trash that social capital by so-called community engagement—community consultation which is nothing of the sort—is an absolute travesty. It is running so-called community consultation exercises where people put themselves out to give their opinions and then find that nothing changes. Yes, they're asked to give their opinions, but those opinions aren't listened to. That damages our democracy immensely. It's the very thing that builds cynicism, builds resentment and builds a sense that the voices and the needs of ordinary people don't matter and that decisions of government are made because of the interests of the rich and powerful, the big corporations, not because of what's in the interests of ordinary people. In so many circumstances, that perception of people that they're not being listened to is absolutely accurate. Their voices are being ignored and bad things are happening to their communities. They are being deafened by unacceptable aircraft noise day and night, because the airports, the airlines and the aviation industry in general are the ones who hold all the power and who determine what happens.

I'll share with you another quote from our hearing into my private senator's bill, my bill which would have changed that and would have required more meaningful consultation. In short, it would have given the community more power. Joe Biviano from the Moorabbin Airport Residents Association had this to say about the Aircraft Noise Ombudsman:

When they get complaints about noise, they will defer that and say: 'That's not our responsibility. You need to speak to the airport.' Their role, as they see it, is to deal with the complaint-handling process. So if the complaint-handling process is not done effectively, they will look at that; they do not actually deal with noise issues or try to address the root cause of what a noise issue may be.

This simply isn't good enough. We can't have consultation that's just a tick-and-flick exercise. In particular, the consultation that occurs around the times of major development plans and the airport master plans is critical. That's what has got to be done well. It has got to be at that time, because that is when you can have meaningful engagement and you can actually change the shape of what's going on at the airport so that these noise issues are ameliorated and reduced, reducing the impact on local communities.

The committee report into my private senator's bill noted that it was clear to the committee that there are significant noise impacts that affected communities are facing which are not being considered, let alone addressed, within the existing consultation frameworks. Yet this bill is taking us backwards by reducing the requirements, and the time frames for community engagement on them, at the most significant time when there needs to be consultation: the major development plan and the master planning processes. It's in these processes that we should be upping engagement, not reducing it. That's why I want to foreshadow that the Greens will be moving a second reading amendment to the bill as follows:

At the end of the motion, add ", but the Senate calls on the government to develop and implement better consultation and community engagement standards for federally leased airports, to mitigate the impact of air noise on communities under major flight paths."

If my second reading amendment were passed and implemented, it would go some way to addressing the serious issues that I have outlined this legislation is ignoring.

Before I finish, one thing I will say is that the Greens do welcome the requirement to include new air noise exposure forecasts in each master plan. This is a good change. But that alone is not sufficient to garner our support for this bill. This is a bill that deserves to go back to the drawing board. Although it looks like it is going to pass here today, we call on other parties and the crossbench to support our amendment as a call to action to the government to look after impacted communities instead of helping big business ride roughshod over them.