#6: Petitioning our leaders

60 Reasons to Protest: Reason #6 – Petitioning our leaders

We ask everyone to please sign BFPCA’s new petition: https://bfpca.org.au/qld-petition

This one is to the Legislative Assembly of Queensland:

Queensland residents draws to the attention of the House:Airservices Australia admitted in Senate Estimates that families and communities in more than 226 suburbs across Greater Brisbane are affected by noise pollution from Brisbane’s flight paths. Three independent entities, the Aircraft Noise Ombudsman, the Brisbane Airport PIR Advisory Forum, and Trax International confirmed inadequate engagement and inaccurate information were provided by Brisbane Airport Corporation and Airservices Australia about changes to flight paths prior to the New Parallel Runway’s launch. Since then, thousands of complaints have been sent to the Premier.

Your petitioners, therefore, request the House to: establish a Parliamentary Inquiry into the impact of Brisbane’s flight paths and ways to rectify the situation using the powers and advocacy of the State of Queensland. The inquiry’s scope should encompass:

1. the clinical and cognitive effects of aircraft noise on Brisbane school children and students;
2. the human health and environmental toll including ultra-fine particle air pollution;
3. the influence of the aviation industry’s donations to political parties and lobby groups;
4. the need to reform state planning legislation as a result of inadequacies identified in the National Airports Safeguarding Framework 2016 with relying on Australian Noise Exposure Forecasts (ANEF) for land use planning;
5. the failure to engage communities and obtain a social licence to operate drone delivery services and air taxis in Queensland.

Sign here: https://bfpca.org.au/qld-petition

Some background

It’s been 1,058 days since the new flight path design above Greater Brisbane was launched causing havoc, distress, anger, and suffering.

As a community we have tried many democratic avenues available to us, including writing complaint letters and emails; putting pointy questions to Senate Estimates hearings; engaging in public consultations such as the Airservices PIR workshops and the Noise Action Plan drop-in sessions; making Freedom of Information (FOI) requests; sending our community representatives to participate in meetings by BACACG, BAPAF, and now AAB; joining national advocacy groups such as Community Aviation Alliance Australia (CAAA) and making detailed written submissions to government; using social media to engage the public, and; casting our vote at the last federal election and upcoming elections.

One additional instrument available to us is creating and signing petitions. They are a common way for citizens to voice their concerns and gather support for a particular cause. Petitions can be presented to government officials or legislative bodies, urging them to take action or reconsider a decision.

BFPCA launched a federal petition to the House of Representatives in 2021, which attracted close to 2,500 signatures over the last four weeks. Our petition attracted the second highest number of signatures of all petitions open over those four weeks (discounting anti-vax petitions).

You can watch the tri-partisan support in the form of speeches delivered by Terri Butler, former MP for Griffith, Trevor Evans, former MP for Brisbane, and Adam Bandt, Leader of the Australian Greens and MP for Melbourne.

While the response to our petition from Barnaby Joyce, the Deputy PM and Minister for Infrastructure at the time (dated 29/11/2021) was disappointing, the petition did help to elevate the issue of excessive noise pollution from Brisbane Airport’s flight paths to become a significant issue in the 2022 federal election.

Let’s do the same for the Queensland State election on 26 October 2024. Sign the new BFPCA petition: https://bfpca.org.au/qld-petition

Do you want to know more?

The five items in our new petition to the Queensland Parliament relate to matters that are the responsibility of the State of Queensland:

1. The clinical and cognitive effects of aircraft noise on Brisbane school children and students;
2. The human health and environmental toll including ultra-fine particle air pollution;
3. The influence of the aviation industry’s donations to political parties and lobby groups;
4. The need to reform state planning legislation as a result of inadequacies identified in the National Airports Safeguarding Framework 2016 with relying on Australian Noise Exposure Forecasts (ANEF) for land use planning;
5. The failure to engage communities and obtain a social licence to operate drone delivery services and air taxis in Queensland.