Mr ANTHONY(10.51 p.m.) —I first congratulate the member for Griffith (Mr McDougall) on a very esteemed appointment as secretary of the Malaysia Friendship Association, and I do wish him well.

I notice in the House there has been a lot of debate about Sydney's proposal for Badgerys Creek and for Holsworthy, but there is another airport that is of closer interest to my heart—Coolangatta airport. It is Australia's sixth busiest airport, on the border of New South Wales and Queensland—Tweed Heads and Coolangatta. This is another airport facing critical testing when it comes to aircraft noise and the balance that has to be achieved by fostering a critical tourism industry for that area—the Gold Coast and Northern Rivers—and also trying to rectify the noise issue which has now permeated the Tweed Heads area.

The Coolangatta airport is the closest airport to any GPO in Australia, being three kilometres away. Indeed, over 25,000 people in New South Wales are directly affected by being under the flight paths. I would like to explain to the House that the government is taking a number of measures to ascertain the level of aircraft noise, and this will be used as a blueprint to establish ANEF zones and ANEFCs for Tweed Heads and also for Currumbin.

Airservices Australia has three noise monitoring devices currently in place now. These will be used to facilitate and audit. From the audit that will be complete halfway through this year, new contour lines will be drawn and obviously new flight paths will be established.

One of the problems is that the previous Minister for Transport, who has gained quite a lot of notoriety in this House in the last couple of months, deliberately altered flight paths—it was with his full knowledge—which caused unnecessary concern to many residents in the Tweed Heads area. That is why we have a substantial noise problem which came about by the direction of the member whom I have replaced.

There are a couple of critical issues with this airport that need to be addressed. I would certainly like the Minister for Transport and Regional Development (Mr Sharp) to come to Coolangatta at the closest opportunity to look at the implementation of a limited curfew and to look at perhaps putting pressure on some particular operators—turbo props coming in the middle of the night, notably the paper plane, which does concern a lot of residents directly under the flight path.

Great consideration also needs to be given to whether Coolangatta airport should have a runway extension, which would really be the precursor for internationalisation. Whilst our airport is critical for domestic traffic and also New Zealand traffic, great care and consideration needs to be given if it is to be an international airport because of the added pressure that wide-bodied aircrafts would place on the residents of Tweed Heads and Currumbin.

In conclusion, I ask that Airservices provide all the information to relevant interest groups within the Tweed Heads area, namely, the noise action group comprising Jim Boydell, Rupt Granot and Ronnie Hoskinson in cooperation with the FAC, of which Maurie Rowe is the chairman. It is a critical airport. For the future of our electorate and Northern Rivers, getting the right balance between the residents and the future growth in tourism is of key importance.