Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on the Airports Amendment Bill 2006. As we know, the purpose of this bill is to loosen restrictions on airlines owning smaller airports; make various changes to airport land use, planning and building controls, and environmental management provisions; and make changes confirming the ACCC’s ability to monitor and evaluate the quality of airport services and facilities.

In light of that, the primary amendments proposed in this bill comprise the following points: (1) reaffirming the parliament’s intention to provide for non-aeronautic development at airports consistent with the airport’s lease and current master plan; (2) providing, through regulation, for commercial investment at non-core regulated airports—that is, general aviation airports; (3) excluding Canberra airport from the operation of the National Capital Plan; (4) implementing recommendations 1, 2 and, in part, 6 arising from the June 2000 Senate committee inquiry into the Brisbane Airport master plan; (5) refining the land use planning and development regimes by reducing statutory public comments and assessment periods; ensuring that the public have ready access to associated documents in electronic form, free of charge, to assist them in providing comment on land use proposals; improving the quality of information provided in airport planning documents; and raising the dollar threshold requiring major development plans to be submitted from $10 million to $20 million; (6) requiring airport master plans to depict the most current aircraft noise forecasts; and (7) providing for greater flexibility with regard to day-to-day on-airport activities, including vehicle control et cetera.

I listened with interest earlier in the day when the opposition spokesman on transport, the member for Batman, had a fair bit to say about this issue, and he made a lot of sense. He seems to be the sensible one in this debate. The rest on the other side seem to be diverging onto their own ideological local airport agendas. Let us remind ourselves about the genesis of the Airports Act 1996. It was, in fact, the Australian Labor Party in 1995 that moved that privatisation of the airports take place. I remind the parliament that, in opposition, the Australian Labor Party continue to make a big thing about privatisation and, shock, horror, what a dreadful thing it is. I remind them that they privatised the Commonwealth Bank, they privatised Qantas and they privatised such things as the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories. They were in the business of privatising the airports; and, as we know, Mr Blount was brought out to privatise Telstra, but they will not admit to that.

In 1996, when the Howard government took office, Labor continued their agenda of 99-year leases of 22 airports around Australia. In 1997, the first phase of these lease sales took place. Brisbane, Melbourne and Perth were the first three involved in this operation. Unbelievably, one of the reasons that problems have arisen from this operation of the lease sale is that most of the bidders paid too much for the airports—in their eagerness to get hold of a Commonwealth asset in this time frame. As a result, it has forced a number of further downstream issues which we are confronting today. One of them is land use and planning issues involving airports.

Today I am going to speak a little bit about the Western Australian situation, particularly the Perth Airport and Jandakot Airport. As some members might know, I used to represent the seat of Swan, and Perth Airport was one of the major issues. Interestingly, the Labor Party used to make much of the Perth Airport until the current member took the seat, and we do not hear much about Perth Airport these days. It has gone very quiet, and why wouldn’t it? The issues that were being used at that time for conflict were a beat-up. Such things as noise issues were well and truly in the forecasts. The same noise contours are being experienced today, and the forecast for such things as the extension of runway 0624 and the parallel runway are still the same in the master plan as they were then.

Other issues have arisen in and around the airport, particularly the issue of land use and planning. When I was the member for Swan, a group in the area began an agitation group called RAGE—or Retailers Against Government Enterprise. It was led by a local businessman, Wally Daly, who happens to own the Super Value store in Belvedere Street, Belmont. He enlisted the support of a leviathan public figure at that time, Bill Mitchell, to lead the charge. RAGE was successful in seeing that a retail complex did not go ahead on Horrie Miller Drive, and for good reason. At that stage, and I was very supportive of this action, the retail in that area—they had done their demographic surveys—was going to hurt many of the businesses in the catchment area. As an aside, RAGE won an award for being one of the most effective lobby operations that year. They were quite pleased about their success and also about their recognition as a lobby group.

Other issues arose when I was the member for Swan, and one was the proposal to put a hot mix plant on airport land. I remember going to public meetings and standing on the back of a truck. Michelle Roberts, the member for Midland or whatever her seat was called, was also standing on the back of a truck, beating up about all these terrible things that were going to happen. And there were the same people who are currently involved in the issue over the approval of the brickworks. The hot mix plant on the airport land is quite an entitled use. It is well placed; it is right out of the way.

I heard the member for Hindmarsh talking about this brickworks’ operations being near residential housing. He obviously has not been into or around Perth Airport. It is a long way from any residential housing. In fact, it is mainly semi-rural lots that surround that particular area, as well as a cemetery, a dogs home and a major dual carriageway. To say that it is near residential housing is quite fatuous and incorrect. Having represented that area, I know it well. All I can say is that those same activists were involved in the issue of the siting of the brickworks.

We know that there are a huge amount of issues around Perth Airport. I refer, for example, to Munday Swamp. It was considered that there might have been a rare, short-necked turtle there. They have never found the turtle. They then said that, while they could not find a turtle there, they had found some skeletons of turtles and that it would be an ideal place in which to reintroduce turtles. Again, it is a long bow to draw. I understand that the current management of Perth Airport have dealt well with this issue.

There was the issue of remnant native bushland on the Perth Airport site. If you look at aerial photographs, you will see that most of it has been degraded by being chopped up by people in hotrods and on motorbikes and motocross bikes; they have degraded the whole site. There was also the issue of native title. That issue has now been dealt with, I understand, in most respects, and the matter has gone forward.

Anyone with a half-decent understanding of this issue would know that Perth Airport has a buffer zone that is far larger than that of Sydney (Kingsford Smith) Airport. Why, right in the centre of Perth, should there be this absolutely vacant space around the airport which could be well used under a proper land use proposal? In Perth at the moment, there is a critical shortage of industrial land. If you have read any transcripts recently about the interference of the celebrated powerbrokers of the Labor Party in and around Perth, you will understand that the issue of land use has been very critical to their success. Some of these land use issues have involved the farthest perimeter around the airport, and the surrounding councils. For example, the City of Belmont lost a third of its area when the land was taken from it in order to locate Perth Airport at its current location. That has led to an issue about the payment of rates. That issue is still outstanding. I understand that the City of Belmont and the owners of Perth Airport are continually negotiating on that matter. The owners have paid their rates this year and they are continuing to work with the CEO of the City of Belmont about the annual payment of rates, and services. These are some of the issues involved in land use around airports.

My colleague the member for Hasluck—and he is entitled to his point of view; he represents that area now, and he represents it very well—was opposed to the siting of brickworks on this land. He is quite entitled to lead the community charge on this issue. But in my opinion this is an entirely suitable use of Perth Airport land. He fails to understand—because I know the same people he was dealing with, the activists in that area—that their agenda was not pure. In fact, those agitating against the brickworks were being financed by Boral to run their campaign. I will not say anything further on that because it is the subject of legal action. There will be a lot more said about what the agenda was in trying to stop the Perth brickworks going ahead.

We do know that the company that wanted to build the brickworks tried to find many sites around the Perth metropolitan area but because that company and its owner, Mr Len Buckridge, were deemed to be enemies of the state by the state Labor Party, they were unable to find suitable land on which to build this facility. It would be potentially the cleanest brickworks that this country has seen, when compared to the Boral operation in the Swan Valley—which, I might add, was given a licence to continue emissions over and above the EPA requirements by the then state environment minister, Judy Edwards. It was an absolute disgrace—it was exposed that she had given them a concession to spew into the atmosphere huge amounts of pollutants outside their licence requirements. At the same time they were working in conjunction with their business partners, the Boral group, to try and knock off this development.

Where could anyone locate their business if the state government was not supportive? Furthermore, Mr Buckridge had tried to buy some land. Believe it or not, Alannah MacTiernan had sold him a parcel of land for $5 million, but Geoff Gallop made her reverse the decision. This was all outlined in the paper in Western Australia. This was the status of his ability to do business in Western Australia. And what happened? The Labor Party continually tried to screw him down because he was deemed to be an enemy of the state because he has not fallen into line with the unions in Western Australia. We know what control the unions have, particularly through their factional allies.

It is interesting to note that one of the most voracious voices in the parliament against the member for Hasluck is Senator Glenn Sterle. He has been given his riding instructions, as we know, by the Labor Party in order to try to do what he can to effect this argument. Unfortunately, he is an absolute disgrace. He is the person who took Senator Cook’s place. It is a disgrace that he could be mentioned in the same breath as Senator Cook. They knocked Senator Cook off at preselection and did not even give him the decency of being allowed to retire due to ill health. They knocked him off and they put this apparatchik of the union, sponsored by Kevin Reynolds, into the Senate. All I can say is that if anyone talks on the phone to Brian Burke and his acolytes, it would be Senator Glenn Sterle, because we know they put him in there through the preselection process. So we know how all of this happened. People need to know some of the background to this matter.

In the time available to me I wish to raise briefly the issue of Jandakot Airport. Jandakot Airport is located in the electorate of Fremantle. There was a proposal to relocate the airport to an area in my electorate called North Dandalup. This has caused much community angst because, even though Jandakot Airport is in the Fremantle electorate, many of the circuit training planes fly over my electorate of Canning and Canning Vale and surrounding areas. There was a proposal by the owners—a group called Ascot Capital—to shift the airport. When the community of North Dandalup inadvertently discovered this in the Australian newspaper they became very active in fighting against it. I can understand their doing so, as I can understand people in Canning Vale wanting to fight against it. They did not want this disruption to their lives and their land use.

What they did not realise in this whole argument was that there was never a formal proposal put to state, federal or local governments. At a public meeting a rather interesting character who is being put up against me as the Labor candidate in the forthcoming election thought he would get some traction on the issue. The community realised that the proposal was something that they needed to work against collectively. I was able to point out to them that the proposal had no legs because it did not satisfy the criteria of both Minister Vaile and Minister Truss, as minister and former ministers for transport. It did not have the support of the local community, it did not have the support of the aviation community, it did not have the support of local government and it did not have the support of state government. Therefore, I was able to read to that meeting a letter by Minister Vaile outlining that, because it did not satisfy these criteria, it would not be approved—even though there was not a formal proposal. It was actually a letter responding to people such as the Air Force association located at Jandakot and saying that this was the minister’s view—that it did not satisfy the criteria. As I said at that meeting, it is a dead duck as an issue. Mrs Marrion Elliott, you wanted to hear me say this in the House: this issue is a dead duck and it will not go ahead because it does not satisfy those criteria.

What will happen now is that the Jandakot Airport owners will do what is being done at most airports around Australia—that is, they will examine the opportunity for land use in the buffer zone of the Jandakot Airport. That includes aviation related industries and non-aviation related industries. As a result we will see quite a growth in non-aviation related use of land at Jandakot Airport. This will not only bring jobs to the area but also do much in terms of enhancing trade for the owners of the small businesses at Jandakot Airport.

I would have liked to have had more time to speak to the specifics of the bill, as I said at the beginning of my speech, but I do agree—I go back to the member for Batman—that planning control of federal airport land should stay in the hands of the federal government. The fact is that we are the honest brokers in this debate. The partisan interests of state and local governments cannot be allowed to take over a national strategic asset like federal airports. Therefore, I commend the bill to the House.

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