Page 452 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 18 March 2014
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To give a local example of this kind of thinking, one that I have been speaking about publicly just today, take the Canberra airport and its plan to grow into a 24-hour freight hub. I understand perfectly the desire for economic growth and the contribution that could be made to this by operating a freight hub at the Canberra Airport. But this needs to be weighed against social and environmental factors, which are also crucial to the decisions we take in the long-term interests of the ACT. That is triple bottom line decision making.
As I have said, we cannot just blindly bow to the mantra of economic growth in every circumstance. In this circumstance there are some serious considerations that we need to think through before we allow Canberra Airport to become a 24-hour freight hub. With the pressing problems of climate change and oil insecurity, it is more important than ever to look at how the ACT can decouple its economic prosperity from a reliance on high polluting activities like air freight. We know that aviation is a potent contributor to greenhouse gases.
Canberra Airport does not have a night-time curfew, unlike other Australian airports, including Sydney. This makes it attractive to the night-time freight that cannot land at Sydney during curfew hours. While Sydneysiders can sleep soundly, Canberra wants to sacrifice its night-time peace and quiet in exchange for Sydney’s left-over freight traffic. There is something rather distasteful in that. We are willing to forgo a curfew which other airports have put in place so that we can attract the air freight that cannot go to Sydney and that Sydney does not want. It is a bit like how some countries attract big businesses because of poor labour and environmental standards. People and the environment lose out to an economic imperative.
Once the freight business begins at Canberra Airport, we can expect it to grow over time, with night-time noise particularly impacting residents of north Canberra, Gungahlin and developing areas in Kingston and the potential East Lake development into the future. It is important to implement a curfew now while it is still possible, and to give business certainty into the future. I think it would be unfair, and there will be very strong arguments against it, in 10 to 15 years time, when there are a large number of planes coming at night, to say to the airport, “We now want to impose a curfew,” them having made significant investment in infrastructure. That is why we need to take this decision now.
Quality of life is one of the key attractions of Canberra, and that will be diminished by night-time airfreight traffic flying over the suburbs. Like the rest of Australia, the ACT should be looking at more sustainable freight and transport options such as opportunities for rail freight.
I am not saying this is easy. It will require cross-jurisdictional cooperation. It might require incentives and it might require some new infrastructure. But there is definitely more that we can do. We have recently seen considerable efforts made at the national level—and the ACT participated in this—to improve heavy vehicle regulation and to cut red tape and make heavy road transport more efficient. Similarly, one of the biggest infrastructure projects in the ACT at the moment is the Majura parkway. Locally, we often talk about how this might assist Canberrans to travel around and
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