Crikey ALP NSW OWN GOAL

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Labor kicks massive own goal over 2nd Sydney Airport

BEN SANDILANDS | MAR 13, 2015 11:15AM | EMAIL | PRINT

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Did this ex minister just try to reverse Labor policy on Badgerys Creek?
It didn’t take long this morning for the wings to fall off Labor’s efforts to score state election points with its support for the second Sydney Airport project at Badgerys Creek in the city’s far west.
All was in fact going well, until the state labor leader, Luke Foley, promised to impose the same ‘safeguards’ on the new airport as those that already cripple the existing Sydney Airport when it comes to a jet curfew.
He was endorsed by a beaming former Labor infrastructure minister, Anthony Albanese, the man whose performance over the Pel Air issue was gutless, evasive and cruelly indifferent to its victims, and contemptuous of the revelations about that fiasco made by an all party Senate committee.
When Labor endorsed the selection of Badgerys Creek as the second airport site in 1986 it did so for a 24 hour airport.  Albanese has also repeatedly adhered to that fundamental condition on many occasions in government and in opposition, but has suddenly changed tack.
Why? What is the point of crippling the new airport with such restrictions when all of the developments that have occurred anywhere possibly affected by aircraft noise upon its opening have been subject to clearly enunciated legislated notice that this would be a 24 hour airport.
Mr Foley’s policy setting on this doesn’t mean Sydney is going to be open for business, but as closed as it is now in terms of air access, which will be a huge relief to his peers in Victoria and Queensland, where the major cities do not have jet curfews based on 60s mind sets about aircraft noise.
Melbourne and Brisbane are the major beneficiaries of this ‘little Sydney’ policy backflip.
The plausible flight paths to and from Badgerys Creek pose much less noise exposure to residential developments than those at Sydney Airport, a point Mr Albanese has often made in the past.
And that is before considering the much lower noise levels associated with newer airliners, and also the new tech engine versions that are coming into service in the near future.
Transport policy ought to be a strong point for the opposition given the childish decisions made by the Baird Government about Sydney’s rail and road project futures. That was blown apart this morning by the ill briefed Luke Foley, and the more experienced, if less trustworthy federal opposition spokesperson for infrastucture Mr Albanes