Non-profit organisation, Urban Taskforce Australia said the Draft National Airports Safeguarding Framework currently open to public scrutiny is a recipe for national planning chaos and could affect hundreds of thousands of landowners in Sydney.
Urban Taskforce Australia’s chief executive Chris Johnson said the Federal Government's incursion into land planning around every airport in Australia is not based on evidence or detailed research.
“It is selectively applied to suit the operators of airports and with uncertain application/multiple controls can only lead to planning chaos," he said.
"We commissioned four leaders in their field with expertise in airports, acoustics, planning, legal issues and economic impact and all four have given the proposed system a fail," Mr Johnson said.
He said legal firm Gadens has reviewed the legal issues, Wilkinson Murray examined the acoustic implications, CBRE assessed the planning and land use issues, and MacroPlanDimasi looked at the economic impacts of the new approach.
In particular, the report by MacroPlanDimasi reveals that 134300 new dwellings around Australia with a total value of $33.5 billion could be threatened if the proposed system takes effect.
“In Sydney, the impact could be to impede as many as 34100 dwellings valued at $8.5 billion across an area of 63 square kilometres. MacroPlanDimasi also found that for established properties in affected areas, values could fall approximately five percent,” he said.
"All of these experts believe that no case has been made for a change to how noise impact is controlled around airports from the current ANEF system which has been operating in Australia for 35 years and in America for 50 years."
“The addition of N60, N65 and N70 noise contours can only confuse everybody and lead to contestible planning decisions that will end up in the courts."
According to Mr Johnson there seems to be no regulatory impact statement as required by COAG, no assessment of the billions of dollars of property investment that could be effected, no explanation of the logic behind the proposed controls and a questionable bias against greenfield housing over brownfield developments.
"Urban Taskforce Australia urges all councils that have airports in their boundaries to read the detailed expert reports we have commissioned before making submissions to the Federal Government. Along with the state governments, the councils must move fast as the public review ends on March 15 and there is very little time for affected parties to absorb the complex issues and send their comments to Canberra,” he said.
"Even the Federal Government’s supposed reason for changing how airport noise is measured is deeply flawed.
"The report states that it is because of increasing complaints outside the ANEF system that something new is needed."
According to Urban Taskforce Australia research the incidence of complaints outside the normal area at Sydney airport and found that 90 per cent of complaints were made by three serial complainers with the largest number of complaints coming from distant Kellyville where a single person logged 1663 complaints.
“To restructure planning rules across hundreds of square kilometres based on a few serial complainers that are not even near airports seems most bizarre,” Mr Johnson said.
"On behalf of the dozens of councils and many hundreds of thousands of landowners around airports the Urban Taskforce believes the Draft National Airports Safeguarding Framework should be scrapped immediately and that all governments should retain the current ANEF system."
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