de WINTON, Ms Lee, Chair, Forum on Western Sydney Airport

[12:07]

CHAIR: Good afternoon, Ms de Winton, and welcome. Would you make an opening statement for us, and then we might ask you some questions?

Ms de Winton : Certainly. The Forum on Western Sydney Airport was formed as a recommendation of the environmental impact statement in 2015 and was formalised in the 2016 airport plan. FOWSA aims to provide a link between the community, industry, governments and WAS Co during planning and construction of Western Sydney airport. It provides a consultative forum for the exchange of information and ideas, with members acting as pathways to and from the broader range of the individual stakeholders.

The objectives of FOWSA are to raise awareness and enthuse the community and stakeholders about FOWSA, its purpose, its members and how they can contact FOWSA; engage and established trust with the community and stakeholders to establish effective two-way communication; consult and seek feedback from the community and stakeholders about the development of the airport; and timely information to educate the community and stakeholders about the project. FOWSA has representation of up to 25 members, who come from across nine broad stakeholder categories, from community representatives, local and New South Wales government, airport operators and aviation users to airlines and associated agencies. The current membership of FOWSA is available online at westernsydneyairport.gov.au. Currently, the forum has a number of vacancies, as a result of people moving roles, which is being addressed by the secretariat, which is resident in the department of infrastructure. Appointments to the forum are made by the minister.

FOWSA meets at least three times per year in Western Sydney. We've had 12 meetings to date. Two meetings were open to the public and attracted broad attendance. This included Campbelltown locals, residents adjacent to the airport site, general aviators and residents from the wider Western Sydney and Blue Mountains area. All questions raised by the members and community have been answered and published on the Western Sydney Airport website—again, www.westernsydneyairport.gov.au. The next FOWSA meeting is scheduled to take place around the end of May to beginning of June 2021.

FOWSA is governed by terms of reference which outline the roles and responsibilities. Again, the terms of reference can be seen on the website. The members are not paid and the department covers meeting expenses, such as venue and catering. The independent chair, me, is paid a per diem rate and travel expenses. FOWSA takes probity very seriously, with all members required to sign a confidentiality agreement and regularly provide an update on conflicts of interest. The minutes of all meetings are publicly available on the Western Sydney Airport website, as previously stated, and the secretariat is provided by the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Communications.

CHAIR: Thanks. I have a couple of questions for you about FOWSA's work. I've been listening to the evidence of residents this morning and want to understand how the predicament that they are in is dealt with by FOWSA. The last meeting of FOWSA was in October—is that right?

Ms de Winton : That's correct.

CHAIR: Is there a date scheduled for the next meeting?

Ms de Winton : We're looking at present at 28 May. That's just being finalised now with the members.

CHAIR: So six or seven months between meetings?

Ms de Winton : Yes.

CHAIR: Who determines who the members of FOWSA are?

Ms de Winton : The initial members were set up in the terms of reference. The members are up to 10 community representatives, and I can go through those if you'd like.

CHAIR: No, I can see those in the notes. Who are the terms of reference determined by?

Ms de Winton : I'd have to pass that back to the department, who established the initial terms of reference.

CHAIR: So it's the department or the minister?

Ms de Winton : The department and the minister, yes.

CHAIR: Who are appointments made by?

Ms de Winton : By the minister—Minister Fletcher.

CHAIR: Have you been the chair the whole time?

Ms de Winton : No, I was appointed on 1 August last year. I took over from the esteemed Professor Peter Shergold, who was the inaugural chair.

CHAIR: How did you end up here as the chair? Did you have a role in the airport before?

Ms de Winton : I did.

CHAIR: How did that work?

Ms de Winton : I was one of the initial members of FOWSA as an industry representative in my then position as the chief executive officer of Sydney Metro Airports—Bankstown and Camden—so my customers at the airport had a significant involvement and interest on how the airspace design was going to go for Western Sydney airport. I was approached after I left that role because of my presence and knowledge of Western Sydney, my involvement so far in Western Sydney airport and, I would suspect, because I've had 30 years as an air traffic controller. So, as we get to the essential point of airspace communication, I think it helps to have somebody with that background going forward.

CHAIR: So is industry representing airport users, essentially, for Bankstown and Sydney airport?

Ms de Winton : Bankstown and Camden.

CHAIR: And then you have experience as an air traffic controller?

Ms de Winton : Yes.

CHAIR: That's terrific.

Ms de Winton : Thank you.

CHAIR: When the FOWSA meetings occur, what sort of issues do the discussions go to?

Ms de Winton : We've had some key discussions on a variety of issues. We generally open the meetings with an update from Western Sydney Airport Corporation, who come as guests to every meeting. We've also discussed the initial parts of airspace planning and flight paths. We're briefed, but certainly don't have a say, on land use and acquisition, biodiversity plans, noise impacts, health impacts, construction progress, employment figures and engagement and communication with the key stakeholders.

CHAIR: If I heard you correctly there is a block of issues there that you're briefed about—land use and acquisition, environmental uses—but you don't have any determinative capacity over those issues?

Ms de Winton : No.

CHAIR: Being a former air traffic controller, there's a lot of community interest in final decisions about flight paths. The people that we've been hearing from are residents or small landholders immediately adjacent to the airport, or the airport precinct, who have been disadvantaged by zoning decisions that leave them in a position where some of them are destitute, unable to move, infirm, unable to make decisions about moving to a flat or moving to a one-storey house or moving to aged care. They have been presented with this sort of consultative structure. But you would argue your organisation is—and I don't want to put words in your mouth—fit for purpose in terms of discussions about prospective flight paths in the 15 to 25 year sort of time horizon. But you're not there for solving the problems of—

Ms de Winton : Of land use? No, we're not.

CHAIR: Who is?

Ms de Winton : I would have to refer you back to the aerotropolis and the New South Wales government for that one.

CHAIR: So there's no role for FOWSA there?

Ms de Winton : No.

CHAIR: So we should really dispense with that in the community's mind, that FOWSA is there for that work. What is the communication and engagement strategy that FOWSA does with affected residents?

Ms de Winton : There are a variety to construct. Certainly in the terms of reference FOWSA was established prior WSA Co becoming a being in its own right. Part of the Airports Act is legislation that every airport under federal lease, so Bankstown and Camden as well, must have a community aviation consultancy group and go to the community with what the airport is building et cetera. So because no CCAG had been established for Western Sydney Airport at the time FOWSA was established to fill that gap, from a legislation perspective, until that is then transferred to WSA Co. So we can give the community information on air space and noise et cetera when it comes. What we do forms part of, I guess, a trio of communication aspects. WSA Co, under Mr Hickey, provides a fantastic update to the community on where the construction of the airport is going. Also, the department of infrastructure provided a great deal of pop-ups, letter drops et cetera last year, reaching, I think, about 23,000 people. FOWSA makes up that part of that infrastructure of communications.

CHAIR: With a special focus on what? What do communicate with people about?

Ms de Winton : Any updates or presentations that are given at FOWSA can then be communicated via the members to their own constituencies.

CHAIR: So FOWSA as an organisation doesn't do it. You've got a board that has local members and—

Ms de Winton : FOWSA has up to 25 members.

CHAIR: And it's up to them to communicate?

Ms de Winton : Absolutely, yes. They're the conduit between their respective constituencies and the information that's being presented there.

CHAIR: So it's not a communication strategy, really, it's a—

Ms de Winton : a method—

CHAIR: a working group. It's a matter then for representatives on the working group to go and talk to—is there any capacity for this group to change decisions that are made?

Ms de Winton : I'd have to pass that one to the department. We're not a decision-making body; we're a communications piece.

CHAIR: Surely you don't need to pass that back. Have you ever been able to change the approach of the department or Western Sydney Airport Corporation to a particular issue? I don't see that is my place.

Ms de Winton : I don't see that as my place. We're a communications piece rather than a decision-making body.

CHAIR: But it doesn't communicate with anybody except for the 20 people. It's a matter for them to go and talk to—

Ms de Winton : And the open forums.

CHAIR: Okay. We'll come to the open forums in a minute, but beyond the open forums, it's a matter for the members of the community to communicate with people that they know, have a relationship with or have some sort of vector of communication with. It's not the role to respond to discussions here or to negotiate or put a position to Western Sydney Airport.

Ms de Winton : Certainly questions that come back through the members are tabled at FOWSA and answers are put on the website—if questions come in.

CHAIR: It's a toothless tiger, really. If Western Sydney residents have a set of concerns or a set of problems like the ones that have been described this morning, they can't really influence the course of events through FOWSA, can they?

Ms de Winton : No. However—

CHAIR: So communication is a one-way street.

Ms de Winton : No. The residents of Western Sydney can feel free to contact any of the members of FOWSA. Certainly, the membership from my viewing of it has been constructed with up to 10 community representatives, including councils and elected members. The residents of Western Sydney can contact as members, and questions will be tabled through FOWSA, and then they will either go to the department. Also in the membership of FOWSA we have a member from the New South Wales government. So while we can't decide things there, we can certainly bring the information in and get answers back out.

CHAIR: But nothing changes, does it? I have a similar communication strategy with my daughter about her room. There is a door. I can knock on the door. I can ask her to tidy her room. She provides me with an answer. I can return innumerable times. The answer is very efficiently provided. The room doesn't change. It's the same here, isn't it? You are a portal for questions and answers. The decision-making process doesn't change, does it?

Ms de Winton : No. We're a portal for questions and answers.

CHAIR: Is it a full-time job being a portal for questions and answers? It's surely not.

Ms de Winton : No.

CHAIR: You must have other things to do.

Ms de Winton : I do, yes. This is three meetings a year.

CHAIR: But it is held out to residents as being, as you say, did you say there was a triptych of communication, a trio of communication vectors for people?

Ms de Winton : The airport does its own communication. I can't comment on that; I would have to refer that back to Western Sydney airport. For updates on department communications that are outside FOWSA, I may not know about them all, and I'd have to refer you to the department for that.

CHAIR: Sure. No wonder people are desperate. You would have heard some of the evidence from landholders this morning. I've heard your evidence that FOWSA is not set up to deal with those issues, but it's held out to residents in Western Sydney that there is this big consultative process. The thing that is the most pressing concern—

Ms de Winton : Is land use zoning.

CHAIR: for some of them is: 'Can we develop our homes? Can we get on with our lives?' For some of them it's: 'Can we just get out of here?' But there's nothing from any of the—no problems are solved. There's no certainty for them. I don't say this to denigrate you or your organisation's work. You're just not there to solve those problems.

Ms de Winton : I would need to refer you back to the aerotropolis and the New South Wales government for that.

CHAIR: I don't have any further questions. Senator Chandler, do you?

Senator CHANDLER: I do have a couple, Chair. I've just been having a look at your terms of reference, Ms de Winton. I note in section 2, 'The role of the Forum On Western Sydney Airport'—and I assume these terms of reference have been on your website for quite some time—it says:

FOWSA is not a technical forum, nor is it invested with any special arbitration or decision-making authority … FOWSA aims to foster a sense of collaboration, empowerment and transparency in decision-making.

How are you achieving that—particularly the last part, about those aims?

Ms de Winton : The make-up of the members is such that there is such a broad range of people on there that it allows information flow to go back to the community, whether it's elected members or councils. I think there are five or six members of the community on FOWSA. If they have questions from any respective members of Western Sydney or the people that they communicate with, they can bring the questions to FOWSA and a discussion will be had. As I said previously, answers will be posted on the Western Sydney Airport website.

Senator CHANDLER: Looking again at the list of your members—and I'm particularly looking at the section up the top that has community representatives, putting my federal parliamentary colleagues to the side—what sort of feedback have those residents been providing to FOWSA and how have they been empowered to go out to their communities and seek feedback?

Ms de Winton : Can I just clarify: are you speaking about the initial 10 community members, so down to Mr Gregory Copeland?

Senator CHANDLER: Yes. Those ones.

Ms de Winton : I'll speak in general terms because I don't know what every individual one is doing. When I took over the chair in August, I met or had a phone call with each of these members. One of the questions was: 'Do you have enough community events or organisations like Legacy and Rotary through which you can speak to the community about FOWSA and the things that you're hearing here?' Certainly the ones that agreed to meet with me or speak to me agreed that was the case.

Senator CHANDLER: That they do have that infrastructure in place, so to speak?

Ms de Winton : Yes. They also made the point, at the time, that they certainly enjoyed the WSA Co, specifically Mr MacKillop, going out to give briefings on where the airport was going. They thought that was very helpful in ensuring that everybody was becoming a lot more excited about WSA Co.

Senator CHANDLER: On what basis were those residents selected to be part of FOWSA? Obviously, I can see why my parliamentary colleagues are there, but how were the residents selected?

Ms de Winton : I'm sorry; I'll have to pass that one back to the department. I don't know how they were selected.

Senator CHANDLER: That's alright. Again looking back to your terms of reference, it's quite clear that the emphasis of this forum is to enable communication and consultation between FOWSA members and the broader community about the 'development of Western Sydney airport, principally the airspace and flight path design process for single runway operations'. As the chair was discussing with you before, this isn't a forum designed to thrash out some of the issues that we've been hearing about this morning.

Ms de Winton : Correct.

Senator CHANDLER: It's fundamentally about the development of the airport itself, what the flight paths are going to end up looking like and—

Ms de Winton : And the airspace, the noise and environmental—

Senator CHANDLER: environmental concerns relevant to the flight path, is that right?

Ms de Winton : Correct.

Senator CHANDLER: Not relevant to any of the other things that we might have been speaking about today. From a jurisdictional perspective, I feel like this is a an ongoing conversation that we're having at this committee around what is the federal government's responsibility and what is the state government's responsibility. FOWSA is fundamentally dealing with the issues that are in the federal sphere, and some of the things that we've been hearing about today that are not the responsibility of FOWSA are in the state sphere—is that right?

Ms de Winton : Yes, that's my understanding.

Senator CHANDLER: You may not know the answer to this, but is there a similar consultation group that's being run by the state—

Ms de Winton : I'm sorry, I don't. I don't know what the Aerotropolis or New South Wales government are doing.

Senator CHANDLER: The Aerotropolis—that is exactly the term I was looking for. Just to be really clear, FOWSA exists to focus on the federal side of things. There are 25-odd members of FOWSA that are working to collect information and provide it to the forum more generally, then go back to the community and consult in conjunction with Western Sydney Airport Corp—or supported, I guess you could say, by Western Sydney Airport Corporation.

Ms de Winton : Yes.

Senator CHANDLER: In terms of my parliamentary colleagues on that committee, they've all been well engaged with the process and are happy with the amount of information they are being provided with? I note that there are three local members in the House of Representatives on the committee: the member for Macarthur, the member for Lindsay and the member for Werriwa.

Ms de Winton : I haven't had any complaints, if that helps.

Senator CHANDLER: Great. That is a good place to start.

Ms de Winton : I can't speak for them, but I've certainly had no adverse feedback that at the minute it's not meeting their needs.

Senator CHANDLER: Were the needs and expectations of what parliamentarians were going to get out of the group and why they were members clearly explained to them right from the outset?

Ms de Winton : I'd have to refer you back to the department on that. It was similar to what I got—I had a letter inviting me to be part of FOWSA in the beginning. The terms of reference were attached, and it explained what was required of me as an industry member.

Senator CHANDLER: In that explanation or that material that you received initially, it was clearly stipulated that you were there to be the two-way conduit of information, in effect—taking information from the department and/or Western Sydney Airport Corp to your members, and then providing it back?

Ms de Winton : Yes.

Senator CHANDLER: In your capacity as an industry member, not necessarily in your role as chair, were you satisfied that any concerns that you were raising with the department were being dealt with appropriately?

Ms de Winton : I was happy that all concerns were being dealt with. As the conduit between industry and having a background in air traffic control, I'm conscious that the community was and is very, very keen to hear more about the airspace. But, given my experience, I know that these things take a lot of time. They're very delicate. It's like playing three-dimensional chess with things that are going a hundred miles an hour. Increases in technology going forward would potentially mean that something that was released four years ago may not necessarily be true in two years time. So it was a balance of how much information goes. But I appreciate that airspace is the hot topic there. However, in the three years I performed that role as the CEO of Sydney Metro Airports and the industry representative, I was comfortable with what I was seeing—very comfortable.

Senator CHANDLER: It's an interesting one, isn't it? I was thinking about this issue when we were hearing from witnesses earlier today. A couple of them did touch on the airspace issues, and I think you're right in saying that it's always a hot topic, even when established airports are changing their airspace, as they do from time to time. When are we expecting the first plane to land at Western Sydney airport?

Ms de Winton : December 2026.

Senator CHANDLER: So it's still five years away. We don't even know what flights might be like internationally in five years time, given what's happened in the last 12 months. There would be an element of guesswork, wouldn't there, if we were to put a plan out to the community now?

Ms de Winton : I'm sorry—is that an element of guesswork for the post-COVID aviation community figures or the airspace figures?

Senator CHANDLER: For both, really.

Ms de Winton : The airspace design is underway. There are a lot of complexities to it, including making sure that the noise impacts are alleviated, that there's no single merge point and that safety is paramount in the beginning. It's a complex beast. From what we've been briefed, I'm comfortable that the expert steering group is on track and on time.

Senator CHANDLER: I'm wondering what can be done to alleviate some of the community concerns. I recognise that it's hard to come up with an airspace plan now—like you say, we're five years away from the rubber hitting the road on this—but is there something we can do to alleviate the community's concerns? Can we say, 'This is what the process looks like, going forward, and this will be when the community has the opportunity to provide feedback,' or has that information already been provided to them?

Ms de Winton : That information, about the development of the airspace, was provided at the beginning on the Western Sydney Airport website. But, under federal legislation, the new EIS, which now has the airspace, will have to go out for community consultation. That's mandatory, and every submission is recorded and taken back to government.

Senator CHANDLER: EIS?

Ms de Winton : The environmental impact statement.

Senator CHANDLER: So there is a consultation process underway, in effect. That is all clearly established and set out in publicly available documents, though it's perhaps not as broadly known within the community as it could be, as evidenced by what we've heard here today.

Ms de Winton : Point taken.

Senator CHANDLER: Thank you very much, Ms de Winton. I really appreciate it.

CHAIR: Thanks, Ms de Winton. I don't have any further questions. The committee will suspend for the lunchbreak.

Proceedings suspended from 12:37 to 13 : 35