Anti-aircraft noise campaigners say they will target investors in Brisbane Airport Corporation (BAC) as they threaten to ramp up efforts to force a curfew and cap on flights over the city.
Aircraft noise was the defining local issue at the federal election for many who live under flight paths that emerged when the Brisbane airport opened its second runway in mid-2020, playing a role in the election of Greens MPs in three inner-city seats.
A sustained community campaign to address the noise led Air Services Australia to commission an independent review into the problem, whose report and recommendations were made public on Monday.
The Trax report said its recommendations would see more flights descend over Moreton Bay to lessen the impact on residents, reduce the frequency and concentration of flights over communities and “optimise the performance of the wider Brisbane airspace system”.
Brisbane Flight Path Community Alliance’s acting chair, Marcus Foth, described the report as “vindication” that “something can be done” to reduce aircraft noise impacts despite original claims from government regulators and the Brisbane Airport Corporation to the contrary.
“When communities have been complaining to Air Services [Australia], usually they get these kinds of boilerplate responses with technical language that suggests that nothing can be done,” Foth said. “And here the Trax report is actually saying the opposite – there is a list of recommendations that are feasible.”
But he said the recommendations would not come soon rnough nor go far enough and that campaigners were now exploring legal options, public protests and shareholder activism to deliver solutions sooner and more comprehensively.
“We’ll be targeting the owners of the Brisbane Airport Corporation,” he said, pointing out some Trax recommendations wouldn’t be operational until 2025.
“If the aviation stakeholders think that another three years of noise pollution torture is palatable, they are sadly mistaken.”
BAC shareholders included the publicly-owned Queensland Investment Corporation, which has a 25% stake in the airport. The Royal Schiphol Group, whose majority shareholder is the Dutch government, has a 19.6% stake in the Brisbane airport. Other major shareholders include First Sentier Investors (26.6%) and IFM Investors (20%) which manage pension, superannuation, university and foundation funds.
Foth, who is also a professor of urban informatics at QUT, said activists would argue that investing in the Brisbane airport would breach the environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment principles of these institutions.
The Greens’ Max Chandler-Mather, who campaigned strongly on aircraft noise in his successful effort to win the federal seat of Griffith from Labor, played a key role in organising rallies last year, and said the goal was to hold “significantly larger”, more visible protests later this year or early next year.
“Last time when we held rallies, most of the people that showed up told me it was the first protest action that they’d ever gone through in their life,” he said. “So it’s a big step to get a community ready to do that.”
Chandler-Mather said the Trax report was “very limited in scope” but confirmed “what we already knew: something needs to change at Brisbane airport with regard to flight noise”.
The chief executive of BAC, Gert-Jan de Graaff, said he welcomed the Trax report and looked forward “to working with all partners including airlines to reduce noise for residents”.
“Brisbane airport wants to minimise the impact on our neighbouring communities,” he said.
