News - Airport

To their credit the ACT Greens have got the issue of a curfew for the Canberra Airport onto the national agenda. They have had Senator Bob Brown put the issue in the Senate.

Unfortunately, as reported in the Canberra Times, the Federal Government's Senator Stephen Conroy has attempted to put dampers on the idea, saying that a curfew is not needed.

But Senator Conroy is getting poor advice. The issue is not that Canberra has sufficient aircraft traffic and noise to need a curfew now. The issue is that it is a whole lot easier to put a curfew in place now when traffic levels and (more importantly) investment levels are at low levels, then further down the track when these issues are at bed levels.

Canberra is a very quiet city - the ambient noise levels are far lower than other cities, making aircraft noise that much more prominant. GCC joined with the Curfew 4 Canberra coalition because we believe a curfew should be brought in while it is an easy things to do.

We call on the Australian Government to reconsider this issue. And we call on all election candidates to get behind this push.