The Greens have announced a bill that would put a curfew on flights between 10pm and 6am at Brisbane Airport.
According to the Greens, the Brisbane Airport proposal introduces an hourly cap on flights and a late-night curfew on air travel over Brisbane to reduce noise.
The bill also proposes a plan to move away from the city and to flights over the water – similar to legislation for flight noise over Sydney.
The Brisbane Airport Curfew and Demand Management Bill 2023 is set to be debated in October.
“It’s time the government listens to the Brisbane community on flight noise. Their ask is simple: they want a curfew and cap on flights just like Sydney has,” Greens spokesperson for Infrastructure, Transport and Sustainable Cities, and MP for Ryan, Elizabeth Watson-Brown said.
“Anthony Albanese got into Parliament in 1996 having campaigned strongly for Sydney’s cap and curfew — but now that he’s Prime Minister, he is backing private airport profits over the needs of our community.
“We’re calling on every Liberal and Labor politician whose job it is to represent the people of Brisbane to join us in supporting this bill—so Brisbane can get a good night’s sleep.”
What’s at stake?
In a statement, Brisbane Airport said the Greens’ proposal threatened the affordability of travel for Australians, jeopardising Brisbane’s only Qatar Airways service “plus thousands of other flights each year”.
According to BNE, the flight cap would limit the number of arrivals and departures to 45 movements per hour, which is less than when Brisbane operated a single runway.
“It beggars’ belief, that in the middle of a national debate about Australians accessing affordable air travel, that the Greens would want to slash international services as well as thousands of services to regional Queensland,” Brisbane Airport Head of Public Affairs Stephen Beckett said.
“International airfares are currently up to 50 per cent more expensive than before Covid. Australians now understand that extra capacity forces prices down.
“Wiping out services from Qatar Airways, Emirates, Cathay Pacific, Singapore, Qantas and Virgin which currently depart after 10pm would hit Queenslanders hard.”
Beckett also said that a BNE cap and curfew would have a “brutal impact on Queensland’s economy, slashing 30,000 jobs across the state by 2032 and wiping $2.8 billion from the economy”.
“Caps and a curfew would mean 3,100 fewer regional flights in Queensland each year which would be a devastating blow to people across the state,” he remarked.
Meanwhile, the potentially impacted airlines would be Qatar (Doha), Singapore Airlines (Singapore), Jetstar (Bali), Emirates (Dubai), Qantas (Auckland), Fiji Airways (Nadi), Virgin (Bali & Fiji), Cathay Pacific (Hong Kong), Eva (Tapei), China Airlines (Tapei), and Vietjet (Ho Chi Minh City).
Airfares to rise?
According to the ABC, one aviation expert says caps and a curfew would drive up airfares.
“Airlines use what we call back-of-the-clock flights that are less popular times to travel, and use these to offer really cheap airfares,” Airline Ratings’ Geoffrey Thomas said.
“If you’ve got hard curfews all of a sudden at 11pm at night and the plane can’t take off, the airline has to unload the 200 or 300 international passengers off that plane, put them up in hotels, which drives up the cost of air travel.”
