John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to support the comments of my friend and colleague the member for Batman, who is the shadow minister for tourism. This rezoning of Googong is wrong. The New South Wales government and the Queanbeyan council are looking after the interests of a developer and not looking after the interests of the people. I know something about that, because I am standing here in federal parliament today by virtue of the fact that the government abandoned the people of Sydney, particularly the inner west, in relation to fair noise-sharing for Sydney airport. The former member for Lowe understood that clearly and resigned from the government. He gave me preferences, and that is why I am standing here.

It makes absolutely no sense to rezone an area residential, with a view to having large planes flying day and night over those houses, just to look after the interests of the proponents of this development in the Canberra area. It makes no sense at all. Planes should be flying over cow paddocks and water. In my experience in Sydney, in my electorate of Lowe in the inner west, we get almost twice as much noise as we were promised by the government because they are more interested in looking after the interests of those people, backed by the Macquarie Bank, who bought the airport for 100 years to maximise profits. As I have said many times in this place, Sydney airport operates very well as a shopping centre and a car park.

I exhort the residents of Canberra and Queanbeyan to look at the history of Sydney airport and the massive expansion that is taking place, particularly since the airport was privatised. Airport noise was not fixed, and nor was there any reasonable expectation that a second airport would be built in Sydney or close to Sydney to take some pressure off Sydney airport. The state government and the Queanbeyan council must think again and defeat this development, otherwise the residents of Canberra and Queanbeyan will be punished for the rest of their days. I commend the Airspace Bill 2006 to the House.

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