Mr RUDD (10:40 PM) —On many occasions before in this parliament I have raised with honourable members the situation in Brisbane as it relates to the plans by the Brisbane Airport Corporation, approved by the Howard government, to construct a new parallel runway as part of the Brisbane Airport Corporation master plan for the future expansion of the airport. If it is constructed, the parallel runway will result in a large number of additional overflights over the southern suburbs and other inner suburbs of Brisbane. At present, there are some 162,000 flights over Brisbane each year of all categories of aircraft. By the time this parallel runway is constructed that number is likely to rise to more than 300,000 flights over the suburbs each year. By that stage, Brisbane Airport would probably be of similar proportions to those of Sydney airport today.

The impact on people's households differs depending on where they live within the prospective flight paths of the new runway and how the flight paths of the existing runway would be reconfigured as a result of its construction. But at a very simple level it will mean that property values in those inner suburbs of Brisbane run a severe risk of being affected. People's quality of life, particularly those who are used to residing in traditional Queensland homes—weatherboard, timber and tongue and groove with tin roofs—will find their amenity significantly affected by the increased number of flights overhead. The third and continuing concern—which all of us who represent inner city constituencies have—is the whole question of airport safety and security, and the proximity of residential areas to present runways and to those proposed to be constructed.

The House will be aware that over the last couple of years I took this matter through the Administrative Appeals Tribunal seeking to have reviewed formally the decision of the Minister for Transport and Regional Services, Mr Anderson, to approve the Brisbane Airport Corporation master plan back in 1999. That case went through four iterations—firstly to the AAT, secondly to the Federal Court, then back to the AAT and on to the Federal Court again. I won the first three of those cases and lost the fourth. The Brisbane Airport Corporation have sought to recover their costs from me for that last stage of the court case, although we are waiting to hear from them on the details.

One of the reasons cited by the judge in the decision on the Brisbane Airport Corporation court case was the precedent that had been established by the Allan case, considered by the full bench of the High Court recently, which was a proposal by a resident in Melbourne seeking to stop the construction of the CityLink freeway. Mr Allan lost his case, in part because the High Court in its full bench found that he had no standing to argue his case. It appears that this new precedent of standing is now being applied more broadly to other applicants seeking relief from executive decision making through the various processes of administrative law, including the AAT.

In my communications with my local community I have outlined the future courses of action that we, as the residents of Brisbane's south side, may now contemplate. One course relates to the remaining approval processes alive under the Airports Act before the new runway is actually built in Brisbane. That will still take some time. The second course relates to possible reforms to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal Act to restore properly the intention of the parliament as originally expressed in the AAT Act 1975 regarding the rights of individual citizens to obtain proper legal redress from administrative decisions which affect them—in other words, to reopen the notion of standing in a manner which provides individual citizens with a right of access to the courts.

The third course of action relates to how we now go about developing a proper and comprehensive aircraft noise management plan for Brisbane Airport. On that, the Brisbane Airport Corporation has announced that it is proceeding in that direction itself. I welcome that, except that the BAC has not seen fit to consult me, as the relevant local member. In fact, the Brisbane Airport Corporation has unilaterally abolished the previous community consultative committee, the Brisbane Airport Environment Committee, which contained community representatives from all three levels of government—federal, state and local. Instead it has been replaced by another committee which, with the exception of one person—Ms Jackie Cann, the head of the community organisation BARB, Ban Aircraft Over Residential Brisbane—has not been selected from the local community. The challenge we face as a local community in developing this aircraft noise management plan is to ensure that we get a decent representative body that is reflective of community sentiment and not the jackboot approach which has been adopted. (Time expired)