This Ombudsmun report shows how Brisbane Airport Corporation secured approvals on inaccurate past information, rather than the actual environmental impacts of its second runway development.

Covered by the same Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act approvals process, this sort of loophole could allow Walker to present a draft Environmental Impact Statement that doesn’t  show the true impact of a 3600 unit and marina development over and next to a Ramsar wetland.

Walker could also promise offsets that won’t ever compensate for the irreversible damage this development would cause and may never be delivered. 

Aircraft Noise Ombudsman Kieran Pehm found Airservices Australia did not complete its analysis before the runway opened.
 
“Airservices’ environmental assessment did not compare the proposed flight paths with those put forward in the 2007 [Environmental Impact Statement],” Mr Pehm found.

“It extracted a map from the 2007 EIS and deemed the area covered by that map to be the area determined by the 2007 EIS to be the area of significant environmental impact.

“This approach did not address the central question of whether the environmental impact of the flight paths ultimately implemented was significantly different from those proposed in the 2007 EIS.”

The report found more flights at 70 decibels or above were arriving than predicted in the 2007 environmental impact study or Brisbane Airport Corporation’s 2018 noise footprint.

The report questioned why Airservices Australia wrote to the federal Environment Minister in August 2018 saying there “were no significant differences” between the 2007 flight paths and the new flight paths when Brisbane’s new parallel runway opened in July 2020.

The community deserves the right to participate in a transparent approval process where the information the developer provides to them is accurate and the public can genuinely have their voices heard.