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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-07-31 Daily Xml
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Parafield Airport

Mr BOYER (Wright) (15:43): I rise today to talk about a very important issue that affects residents of the north and north-eastern suburbs, that is, Parafield Airport. I know that all members of this place will be familiar with the airport in one way or another. However, they may not be aware that in the last eight months there has been a draft master plan, prepared by the airport management committee and subsequently approved by the federal government, which contains enormous increases in the number of flights for the airport. I want to talk briefly about the process that has led to the approval of that draft report, which is now no longer a draft but an approved master plan and will mean that the changes encompassed in that report will go ahead in the near future.

It will not surprise members to learn that the majority of issues surrounding the airport are in regard to noise from the airport. I would like to say at the outset that there are a lot of good aspects around having a big employer, that is, Parafield Airport, in our local community. It does employ a lot of people because a lot of pilot training occurs there, and I believe that small freight also comes into the airport.

I do not wish my words today to be misinterpreted as for some reason saying that there is no benefit to our community of having Parafield Airport there. That is not true. I would like to make it known that my comments are specifically in relation to the master plan and the proposed increase in flights contained therein.

As is the case with many people in this place who ran at the last state election, I did a lot of doorknocking, and I knocked on thousands of doors in Brahma Lodge, Salisbury East and Gulfview Heights, which are largely the three suburbs, at least in my area, most affected from the noise that emanates from the airport. It was not lost upon me very, very early in the piece that one of the big issues in those communities is disturbance from the noise of aircraft flying out of Parafield Airport.

In particular, the suburb of Brahma Lodge is affected because it is very close to the airport. In fact, Frost Road is almost a boundary, really, between the airport and the suburb of Brahma Lodge, and planes take off in that easterly direction. When their throttles are at maximum they are taking off and when at their loudest, they are actually not very far above the roofs of the homes in Brahma Lodge. The residents of that suburb feel it very acutely, and that was not lost upon me as I spoke to them in the lead-up to the March state election.

I think that it was about mid-2017 that the draft master plan was released for public comment, and I would like to speak a little bit about the consultation process that occurred after the plan was released. I think it is fair to say that it was inadequate and substandard. Consultation consisted basically of one public meeting, which I attended. The only other members of this place who bothered to turn up were from the South Australian Labor Party. No other political candidates came along.

The entirety of advertising for that public meeting was limited to a couple of ads, I think, in the local Messenger, and so I took it upon myself as a candidate for at least the partial suburb of Salisbury East and Brahma Lodge to go out and do some letterboxing to inform residents there that the public meeting was on and that, of course, they were encouraged to come along and say their piece.

The former member for Wright Jennifer Rankine also sent out communications to members in her area to make sure that they were aware as well, and we had a public forum, which was very, very well attended. Of course, Mr Speaker, you will not get a prize for guessing that the issue on the minds of most of the people who came along to that meeting, the issue that they wanted specifically to raise, was around aircraft noise.

I will have a little bit more to say on this topic later when I go to Canberra and talk to some people about what has occurred with this consultation process and what is contained in the draft plan. However, the very first thing that was said to those people at the consultation meeting was, 'If you are here to talk about noise from aircraft, you are at the wrong meeting.' It was at that point that half the meeting basically walked out, and I think it is fair to say that the rest of it was a shemozzle, but I shall continue my comments on the rest of the consultation process at a later date.

Time expired.

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