Transcript - radio interview - WSFM 101.7 with Phil O'Neill

PHIL O’NEILL [HOST]: Oh, here we go. Infrastructure Minister Catherine King. I’m sorry, Minister, I just I got lost there in a moment of question time.

CATHERINE KING [MINISTER]: I was going to chime in but I thought it would be rude.

PHIL O’NEILL: Yeah, I was waiting for you to jump in there.

CATHERINE KING: No, it was funny. Anyways, I wasn’t sure if you could hear me. But anyways, there you go, you have me.

PHIL O’NEILL: No, it’s terrific. Good to have you on the phone. We find ourselves in a difficult situation here. One, the pros is this is very good for Western Sydney, good for jobs. The downside is the lack of a curfew, I’m led to believe, with a lot of people saying, well, why are these flights going to continue from midnight to five o’clock?

CATHERINE KING: Well, this airport was always designed as a curfew-free airport. That’s the reason that it stacks up economically. It’s the reason, in fact, we’re having to build a second airport in Sydney in the first place is because there is a curfew on your Kingsford Smith Airport. That’s one of the busiest airports in the country, with 80 flights per hour, rolling hour, coming into that airport. So, really, this airport and the noise tool and the flight paths, the preliminary flight paths we’ve released yesterday, that project out what the projected flights will be up to 2033 is much lower capacity airport, and it’s also a very different airport as well in terms of the residential density around it as a greenfield site. But with that in mind, we do know there will be impacts. You can’t build an airport without planes, you can’t build an airport without planes flying and that means there will be an impact. It’s why the government has chosen to release the flight paths, these preliminary flight paths early and I’ve chosen to develop and build a noise tool which will give the best information we possibly can for people to plug in their address and look at how they might be affected right out to 2033.

There’ll be an environmental planning process that happens a bit later this year which looks at things like environmental impact, the noise impact, whether changes need to be made, whether compensation by way of insulating houses or purchase of certain properties has to be made. That’ll all be done later in the year. But I wanted people to have as much information now as they could. It’s been built – so there was some proof-of-concept flight paths put out in 2015 when the airport was first mooted around being built and there was a lot of community feedback then. The flight paths have been designed around that feedback, which was really – obviously, we have to be safe first, we have to make sure that the planes are safe and the flight paths are safe. It’s a pretty busy airspace there. But we’ve also tried to minimise the noise over residential areas as well as minimising the noise at night as best you can in that congested airspace.

TASH [JOURNALIST]: Minister, can I just chime in here? It’s Tash in the newsroom. You said that this was obviously flagged a while ago. At that time, was everyone aware and did you let everyone know that there was not going to be a curfew?

CATHERINE KING: In 2015, I wasn’t the Minister. Obviously, we’ve had a change of government in the last year. So, yeah, it was always designed as a curfew-free airport. That’s always been known very widely that there would be no curfew on this airport.

PHIL O’NEILL: And so when you talk about the balance too sorry, Tash, when you talk about the balance of this and you talk about compensation, which is what obviously people are going to start thinking about as well. Double glazing, I suppose, and things like that. There’s got to be compromises. People perhaps, who are thinking, “now I’m going to have to move out.” These are things that obviously you’ve considered.

CATHERINE KING: Obviously, in terms of the flight path designs, we’ve taken those principles – and this isn’t, you know, it’s not me, Catherine King, the minister as politician, designing them. They’re designed by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, Air Services Australia, Department of Defence and the Western Sydney Airport operators themselves. So, there’s technical experts who design these flight paths on the basis of all of those things, but they’ve taken that into account. But through the environmental impact statement process, which happens later this year, the Planning Minister, as she goes through, looking at what needs to be done in terms of making sure that we’ve met our environmental approvals, what are the issues around noise. Those are issues that have been flagged in that process, but it’s why we wanted to give people information as early as possible to be able to make decisions about how they might be affected or in some cases, may not be affected at all.

TASH: Minister, I just want to ask into - everyone, so they’ve known since 2015, is it then fair to compensate people, even though they’ve already known that this was going to happen? They’ve jumped into this, they knew, you know, if they’re moving there since 2015, since they knew the airport was going to be there, they’ve jumped in, they’ve moved there, and people who are already there at the time, they’ve had all this time to sort of prepare. And that money, couldn’t it be better spent, I guess, instead of compensating people that knew that this was going to happen?

CATHERINE KING: Well, we always know that there will be an impact of noise on people and there’ll be a small number of households that are really – the closer you are, obviously, to the runway, the more noise and more affected you will be. So, that’s always been built into the building of Western Sydney Airport, that there would be a need to noise insulate and possibly purchase some properties, that’s always been built in. What I would say is, sort of going forward is airports are – they’re big, they do get busy and they do develop over a long period of time. I’ve got before me at the moment, obviously, major planning approvals to look at third runways at Melbourne Airport, for example. This airport will grow over 20, 30, 40 years, this airport will grow. It’s really important that in terms of state planning and local planning, that those buffers are kept because then you do continue – you do get, if there’s encroachment on those buffer zones, you get more and more people who somehow come in thinking that they’re not going to get noise and when things change, they will. So, it’s important in planning going forward that that’s brought into consideration. In some cases with Canberra Airport, for example, when developers actually do build close, there’s actually a caveat on your actual deed that says you need to be aware that you are in this area and this is what will happen. So, making sure people are aware going forward, I think is important. But we’ve designed this with all of the existing residents that are there today are in place.

PHIL O’NEILL: And a specially designed tool that you said as well. How do people find out about that? Where do they go for that?

CATHERINE KING: Yeah, if you go on to wsiflightpaths.gov.au, that will get you to the noise tool. It’s an online community portal. There’ll also be community information sessions and pop up stores at supermarkets and things like that. So, again, all of that information will be on that portal. You’ll get to meet the people that actually design the airspace. And obviously, we’re wanting to make sure we can minimise as much of the unintended consequences of this as we can. But bearing in mind, you’ve got Richmond, you’ve got RAAF Richmond, you’ve got Camden, you’ve got Bankstown already there, and Kingsford Smith flight paths already going in that area as well. So, we’ve done what we can with all of that context, but really do want to hear from the community. And I know this will affect some people –

PHIL O’NEILL: And I’m sure you will. Okay, we’ll leave it there. Infrastructure Minister Catherine King, thanks so much for your time this morning. And if you would like to comment on that too, you can go to the WSFM Facebook page as well, where you can leave your comments.