Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One of the issues for people living in the electorate of Hindmarsh is airport noise and development on airport land. Many constituents have raised this issue with me and our state MP for West Torrens, Mr Tom Koutsantonis, who together with me has been supporting the residents in their fight for a long time now. I must thank him for the help and assistance he has given the residents and me in the western suburbs on the issue of aircraft noise and other related airport matters.

I personally have lived under the flight path for most of my life. However, compared to some I am fairly lucky. I do not live right next door to the airport. Where I live, the planes fly so low that it is a bit of a joke in the neighbourhood that, if we sit on the roof, we can tickle the bellies of the aeroplanes as they fly over. But for residents in some of the suburbs in the western suburbs such as Brooklyn Park and West Richmond, which are right next to the airport, it is no joke.

After years of lobbying by residents and me, the airport insulation program was finally introduced in 2000. It had been in place in Sydney for residents since 1994. Why Adelaide residents were deemed to be less deserving for so long is beyond me. However, residents around the Adelaide Airport celebrated when the program was introduced. Finally there was a chance that we could hold a conversation in our homes or talk to people on the phone without being interrupted and that young children could take an afternoon nap without being woken too soon.

But, in the suburbs of Brooklyn Park and West Richmond, residents in the streets right next to the airport, who had been lobbying long and hard for the program, reasonably expected their homes to be insulated as well. But a strange thing happened: areas further away from the airport were insulated, while a number of houses right next to and bordering the airport, in streets such as Western Parade, Press Road, Lyons Street, Raws Road, James Avenue, Clivan Street, Marles Court, Cleo Court and Clifford Street, were not insulated. The current argument by this Liberal government is that these streets are not touched by the flight path. But residents living in those streets know, and I know, that that is simply not the case, because there have been examples of trees being cut down because, they say, they interfere with the flight path, yet when it comes to insulation residents are told that they are not in the flight path. Somehow it is argued that, for some reason, these houses are not in the flight path.

The flight path varies considerably, and a large number of planes fly over the non-insulated houses each day. We all know that flight paths are not like railway tracks, where they are solid and sit in the one spot continuously. A flight path diverts continuously, 50 metres either way of the actual flight path. In addition, the insulation program is such that in some streets houses on one side are insulated while houses on the other side of the street are not. To the residents, and indeed to me, this seems like bureaucratic nonsense. The noise on one side of the street is no less than that on the other. I urge the minister to expand the airport noise insulation program. (Time expired)