Transcript - interview - ABC Radio Sydney, Breakfast with James Valentine

JAMES VALENTINE [HOST]: “Why all the fuss about airports?” writes Taro from Watanobbi. Morning Taro. “Nobody cares about living next to motorways or railways which are 24/7. I used to live next to the main north line; the freight trains made more react than the planes. I think both airports should be 24/7 to share the noise.”

Yeah there’s a few people saying this kind of thing, that, you know, is it just something that we need to accept. If you’re in a big city you’re going to have airports, you’re going to have traffic, you’re going to have freight, you’re going to have these sort of things. You’re going to have, you know, we’re so resistant to any kind of thing that increases our infrastructure but also increases our noise that is this the whole problem?

If you think about it from even just the point of view of entertainment, people move into areas and then they want the restaurants to shut down or the hotels to shut down. “Oh, these are noisy after 10. I can’t have this.” Maybe we just need to be more tolerant of this. We need to understand that this is the price you pay for a big city. Other people are saying, “Yeah, but I don’t live in the big city. I live in the Blue Mountains, and we’re going to be affected by flight paths, and we definitely don’t want that to happen.”

Well, how has it all been decided. Catherine King is the federal Minister for Infrastructure and Transport and joins us this morning. Minister, good morning.

CATHERINE KING [MINISTER]: Good morning, James. I can faithfully report it’s a very chilly 6 degrees in your old hometown of Ballarat this morning.

JAMES VALENTINE: Right, yes. Hello, yes; I forgot you were the member for Ballarat. Good morning. Well, go and visit my mum when you’re done here at the Arch of Victory. She’s up near there.

Catherine King, what, how was this decided? What sort of data did you deal with? Have you tried to, is it, have you looked at the whole map and said what is the least number of people we can affect?

CATHERINE KING: So a couple of things, is personally I haven’t designed as a politician the flight paths; they’re done by experts. So there’s an expert advisory group that comprises of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, Air Services Australia, Department of Defence as well as the operator of Western Sydney International Airport. And so they have worked through, it takes a very long time to design these.

There was a series of principles that were established back in 2016 which really were done in consultation with the community which were principles around obviously safety, the flights have to operate safely; that’s the paramount concern. But then looking at where do you, can you minimise noise impacts over residential areas, where can you minimise impacts at night. And so those design principles have really formed part of the flight path. But, of course, we have to take into consideration it’s a busy airspace, despite the fact what it may not feel that, you’ve got RAAF Richmond, you’ve got Bankstown, you’ve got Camden and obviously you’ve got flights coming out of Kingsford Smith as well.

So all of those factors had to be taken into account to design these preliminary flight paths, and they are preliminary. And we’re releasing them early to try and provide as much information to people as possible before the environmental impact statement process, which will happen later this year.

JAMES VALENTINE: So is there a chance that these could change?

CATHERINE KING: There is a chance, and that’s why it’s a genuine community consultation. There’ll be, the people involved in the design will actually be out and about in the community on streets stalls providing community information sessions. There’s feedback lines and obviously I really encourage people to go and have a look at the noise tool that’s been developed to try and get an impact. Because it might be that, you know, your suburb is affected, but when you look at the flight path that, the flight path is mainly over an industrial area as opposed to the residential area. So you really need to go and look at the real world sort of impacts of that.

But, yes, this is a genuine community consultation. There then is later this year the environmental impact statement process that we have to go through that looks obviously at the impacts on the environment, on noise and social [indistinct] before that can be approved.

JAMES VALENTINE: I mean, I suppose given what you’re describing there the complexity of what you’re describing, is there even much flexibility about where a flight path goes?

CATHERINE KING: Yeah, well, obviously, as I said, safety has to be paramount. We, you know, everyone expects that when they get on a plane, that there has been, you know, clear assessments about that. So obviously that and obviously there are constraints, but there is a genuine community consultation to try and do what we can to make sure that those principles around minimising noise over residential areas, particularly at night, we can do that as best we possibly can.

JAMES VALENTINE: I suppose I’m just suggesting that given what you’re describing, there’s a lot of flights already in this area, what with Mascot, what with Richmond, the location of the airport, the way the weather patterns will be, what has to occur, the planes arriving and taking off safely, how much flexibility is there in where you put a flight path?

CATHERINE KING: Well, exactly. To some extent the runway is certainly already, you know, the runway is already down and so there’s, you know, a pretty clear idea about where the directions of planes can come. There is some flexibility, but you’re right, to some extent they are very complex pieces of work and so they’ve been designed with all of those principles at play. But, you know, there may have been things that the designers have not considered and, really, it’s only people on the ground coming and talking to us, explaining those that really provides my department and CASA and Air Services Australia with the opportunity to have a look again to see whether they can minimise those impacts on people.

JAMES VALENTINE: I mean, in some ways it is obvious if you’re directly in and around the airport, you’re going to be affected by the flight paths almost wherever they are. If we go a little further afield, perhaps the area that’s most crucial is Blue Mountains. Here’s an area that it’s a world heritage area, people live and visit there to not have a flight path going over them, to not be, to not have that experience. You know, we guard these, we think of these areas as sacred. Is there, the planes are going to be going over the top of them, aren’t they?

CATHERINE KING: There are areas of the Blue Mountains that will be affected, and you’ll see that from the flight paths and the noise tool. But the designers have worked pretty hard to try and ensure the minimum possible impact to the Blue Mountains, and that’s, you know, that’s been part of the design principles, acknowledging that that area is an area that is very sensitive. But there is some impact on the Blue Mountains. I don’t think, you know, I’m not going to shy away from that.

JAMES VALENTINE: And that perhaps seem to me, to many that’s the most disappointing thing. I mean, here’s an area that, well, it’s a bit like it just shouldn’t have any.

CATHERINE KING: Well, I think there’ll be lots of areas that say there shouldn’t be any impact at all. But I think, you know, what we’ve tried to do as part of the design principles is make sure that there’s, you know, we minimise the impact over residential areas, we minimise the impact at night, we minimise, you know, the disruption to people as much as we possibly can. But we can’t say that there’ll be no impact anywhere. I think that’s the difficulty when you’re building something like this, when you’re building a second airport, that there will be flights coming out of it and there will be noise that comes from those flights. We’re trying to do the best we can to minimise the noise, minimise the disruption, but also through the environmental impact statement and through that process there’s the opportunity for people in the Blue Mountains to obviously raise those environmental issues, biodiversity, all of those First Nations heritage and the world heritage area as part of that process as well.

JAMES VALENTINE: Yeah. There’s no chance of it not being 24 hours? There’ll be no curfew on this airport?

CATHERINE KING: No, it was always designed and built as a curfew-free airport. And it’s a significant constraint, you know, the reason that we’re building the second airport in Sydney is because we have a curfew on the first one. That’s part of the problem, is that trying to get, you know, increasingly we are bringing more and more freight in by air, freight that’s critical to everything and every part of our daily life. And really, that is how the airport has been designed, as curfew free.

JAMES VALENTINE: Yeah, yet development has changed enormously in that area since that notion was floated. There’s a lot of housing out there now. We’ve been noting the idea of maybe it’s time to get rid of the curfew on Mascot, share the pain. And maybe it’s less on both.

CATHERINE KING: Well, again, I think it’s really important and incumbent particularly on local councils and state governments where you’ve got an airport, particularly on a, which was, in essence, a greenfield site, although noting there are a lot of smaller townships and communities through there, to really be very careful about those planning decisions. Because, you know, I’m dealing with the issue now. I’ve got to have before me the decisions about a third runway at Melbourne Airport, for example. And when you’ve had infill development or development encroach on the airport, you know, it does make a significant impact on people. So the reason we’ve got Badgerys Creek, you know, in the location that it is is to make sure that, you know, we try and minimise noise as much as possible. So those developments, I really encourage local councils and state governments to think very carefully about those developments into the future.

JAMES VALENTINE: Yeah. Catherine King, thanks for talking to us this morning.

CATHERINE KING: It’s been good to talk to you. And I encourage people to have a look at wsiflightpaths.gov.au. I know it’s live now, as I understand it. And, you know, there’ll be lots and lots of conversations to be had from now until the airport opens in 2026.

JAMES VALENTINE: Catherine King is the federal Minister for Infrastructure.