Demands to fix noise fall on deaf ears

BFPCA sent letters to Brisbane Airport Corporation’s CEO Gert-Jan de Graaff and Chair of the Board David Peever, Airservices Australia’s CEO Jason Harfield and Chair of the Board John Weber, as well as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development The Hon Michael McCormack MP regarding the BFPCA key findings as outlined in our submission to the Aircraft Noise Ombudsman.

BFPCA demands a new Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and the need for greater control over BAC’s actions moving into the future. We will post responses as they come in. We urge all affected residents to read the correspondence and write to the respective board chairpersons, CEOs and politicians, sharing your personal concerns and stories. We have developed templates (emails to the executive | letters to federal MPs) to assist you with the letter writing. It’s time to take our issues to the top of the respective organisations. We all have wasted too much time and energy with the troops specifically trained and engaged to shield criticism and prevent any questioning or action.

BAC CEO’s response

Response from Airservices Australia

Overall, both BAC’s and Airservices’ responses are extremely disappointing. They display a lack of understanding of the engagement process and the data provided to impacted residents by both organisations’ executive leadership. It also displays a complete lack of empathy to residents who are now seriously impacted by the new flight paths. Especially disappointing is the lack of any reference to or comment on the BFPCA survey outcomes. Given the serious family health and welfare concerns legitimately raised by impacted community members in the survey, BFPCA considers the commentary omission by BAC and Airservices offensive and once again questions the validity of their stated community values and culture.

Key observations

• We do not deny the extensive marketing campaign undertaken by BAC, but totally reject the commentary that there has been no misleading or inaccurate data and statements;
• We totally refute the suggestion that community engagement was accurate and went beyond what was required;
• We do not accept the passing responsibility of the flight path design from BAC to Airservices Australia AND from Airservices back to BAC. BAC fought hard for a parallel runway and once approved they fought equally hard to drop ‘over the bay operations’ in favour of ‘Mixed Parallel Simultaneous Operations’ in order to maximise every opportunity for increasing operational efficiency and capacity at the expense of thousands of Brisbane families’ health, lifestyles and financial position.
• BAC’s commitment to working on marginal improvements and involvement in Airservices’ upcoming Post-Implementation Review falls unacceptably short of our demands – a new EIS and flight path design with controls to protect the community is a non-negotiable performance improvement that BFPCA continues to demand.

Our response to BAC and Airservices Australia

We request that BAC’s and Airservices’ leadership stands up and ensures that they act and live by their community value statements. Stop insulting us with more PR spin. From the responses we received, it is apparent that the depth of community anger, bewilderment and disempowerment that has been caused by their actions is not even acknowledged by either of them. We invite BAC CEO Gert-Jan de Graaff, BAC Chair of the Board David Peever, Airservices CEO Jason Harfield, and Airservices Chair of the Board John Weber to attend and address public meetings in the impacted areas to personally share their ‘detailed and accurate’ information with us and to answer our questions.

It is not lost on our members that there has been a total lack of presence by the leadership of these organisations over the years and an unwillingness to engage in any public forums where the flight path’s social damage was going to be felt. The reason for this absence is now becoming patently clear. We do not accept any longer their one-way information dissemination ‘pop-up’ caravans. We also assure them that we have no intention of going away or leaving our homes due to this injustice. This is not a group of hysterical people with bogus claims. We are a community that has been misled due to the protracted time between project approval and project completion and abandoned under a ‘guise’ of progress and through poor accountability by those we trusted. We will not be silenced or accept what has been delivered – a new EIS and flight path design with controls to protect the community long into the future is non-negotiable from BFPCA’s perspective.

Email the executive of BAC and Airservices Australia

Please read the letters posted above and respond directly to the executive of BAC and Airservices Australia with your personal comments and stories: