Not content to wait until after the ACT election on 18 October, the ACT Greens are already active in pursuing a key campaign issue for the Gungahlin Community Council - a curfew for the Canberra Airport.

Greens leader Bob Brown has tabled a motion in the Federal Government Senate, to be debated on October 13, calling for the 11pm-6am curfew for Canberra, citing how well they worked in Sydney, Coolangatta, Essendon and Adelaide.

When GCC reps met a few weeks ago with Greens candidates Shane Rattenbury and Meredith Hunter, we pointed out that the airport curfew was a key concern, even though aircraft noise is not a significant issue for Gungahlin - yet.

We explained that it is far easier to get this sort of thing in place early in the piece, rather than years later, when various businesses have invested heavily in infrastructure and business development - points we argued previously in our submission to the Canberra Airport Master Plan review.

Clearly our concerns struck a chord with them, as the Canberra Times reports today:

The Federal Government has so far resisted calls for a curfew, saying there is not enough traffic or noise levels to require one.

ACT Greens candidate for Molonglo Shane Rattenbury rejected this argument, pointing to airport master plan documents that predicted 20 flights between midnight and 5am each day.

''[The Commonwealth is ignoring] the future expansion plans, and it's the classic situation where once the aircraft movements are started, the airport will argue there cannot be a curfew because it will destroy their business.

''So the Government is creating a catch-22 situation.

''Our argument is that we should act now to avoid creating a problem, rather than making a problem, and then having a big dispute about how to fix the problem,'' he said yesterday.

A curfew would ensure residents of north Canberra and Gungahlin would be able to get ''some respite at night'', and making a decision now would also help the airport's owners.

''I think it is important that we give certainty to the airport about what parameters they can operate in,'' he said.

He is calling on ACT Labor and Liberal MLAs to lobby their federal counterparts on the issue.

Unfortunately, as reported in the Canberra Times a week back, the Federal Government's Senator Stephen Conroy has already 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, than further down the track when these issues are at bad levels.

Canberra is a very quiet city - the ambient noise levels are far lower than other cities, making aircraft noise that much more prominent. 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 its position on this issue. And we call on all election candidates to get behind this push.

Our thanks go to the Greens for pursuing this issue on the Gungahlin community's behalf.