By Kate Lockyer
Brisbane Flight Path Community Alliance (BFPCA) held their Flight Path Noise Protest at Brisbane Airport Corporation headquarters recently.
BFPCA Chairperson, Professor Marcus Foth, said they are ready to work with the government and “parties of all colours”, but they will be more disruptive if their demands are not met.
The gathering comes after Minister for Transport Catherine King refused to meet with BFPCA.
“This Minister has forced this protest from the Brisbane community,” Mr Foth said.
“We wrote to Ms King in 2022 asking for a meeting, which she rejected in February 2023, and then directly told the community they must protest at her Press Club appearance in March — so here we are,” he said.
Queensland Police Services who attended the rally estimated there were about 1000 people at the protest, and Mr Foth said there were others who decided not to attend because they are waiting for a protest at a more disruptive location like a terminal.
One of their eight community demands getting attention is for a flight curfew from 10pm to 6am, but Mr Foth said this needs to work in conjunction with other demands.
These include: an independent airspace review, a Ministerial Direction to redesign the airspace, a Brisbane Airport Community Forum, a long-term operating plan for aircraft noise, an Airport Capacity Declaration with flight maximums, imposing aircraft noise levies, and amend the Air Services Act 1995.
Two new campaigns were launched at the protest – a new petition targeting the Queensland Government, and a request for people to make a formal complaint to the Department of Infrastructure and Transport about their failure to oversee Airservices Australia regulation.
Mr Foth said the new petition has their highest number of signatures yet, currently sitting at over 2,300.
“Whilst the (Queensland) Premier Anastacia Palaszczuk has always been saying that aviation is a federal matter, it hasn’t stopped her from subsidizing Brisbane Airport with $200 million of Queensland taxpayer’s money in order to attract even more planes over Brisbane,” Mr Foth said.
“One of them is the new Emirates flight… it arrives at 10.20pm and leaves at 2.50am… By our calculation about half a billion people get woken up because of this Boeing 777 flying over the city.
“This has been enabled by what, in the premier’s words, is her ‘aviation war chest’.”He said people can access the petition and complaints lodgement at https://bfpca.org.au/.
Marcus Foth speaking at the flight noise protest; photo credit Belinda Turner