Page 3528 - Week 11 - Thursday, 14 October 1993
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The Chief Minister and this Government are very quick to jump on things like very fast trains, tilt trains, slower trains and medium-speed trains. They are very fast to jump on the band wagon of international airports and international freight terminals. Not one of them is their own initiative and, of course, they have not put one cent into any one of them either. They keep talking about them, but they do not do anything. I would like to see some evidence that this Government is really serious about fostering industry and fostering some new developments in Canberra.
I will talk briefly about the Federal Airports Corporation and the Civil Aviation Authority. I said before that what is happening in terms of consolidating Australian air traffic control in Brisbane and Melbourne will have nothing to do with what happens at Canberra Airport. It will not have anything to do with what happens at Sydney Airport either, because the centralised traffic organisations at Brisbane and Melbourne will be controlling the mass of traffic travelling across the length and breadth of the country, but once aircraft move into a local controlled area such as Canberra there will be somebody on the ground there controlling them.
Mr Lamont: Within 10 nautical miles.
MR KAINE: Exactly. The fact is that, because of the radar network and other navigational aids that now exist across the length and breadth of Australia, an air traffic controller sitting in Melbourne is quite competent to put an aircraft onto a flight path that will put it into Canberra Airport, and he can do it just as well as one sitting out here at Fairbairn can. It will not affect in any way - - -
Mr Lamont: Nonsense!
MR KAINE: By Mr Lamont's reasoning they are going to be in an awful shambles at Sydney Airport, because that is a long way from Brisbane and it is a long way from Melbourne.
Mr Lamont: You are dead right. The experts say that, not somebody like you who has had his licence two-and-a-half minutes. Go and talk to the air traffic controllers. You still have your P-plates. What would you know?
MR KAINE: At least I get up there and I mix it in the airspace, and that is more than you do. You would not know which way to go to get off the ground. I am not setting myself up as an expert on this matter. I am no more an expert than Mr Lamont. He spent a great deal of time giving us a lecture on it, and he knows nothing whatsoever about it. The fact is that the traffic in and out of Sydney Airport will not be affected one iota by the fact that air traffic control is centralised in Brisbane and Melbourne; nor will traffic in and out of Canberra be affected by it. If you want to say something that adds to the debate about what is happening in Canberra, get your facts right and focus in on us.
In conclusion, Mr Deputy Speaker, I want to comment on the fact that, of all of the people that the Chief Minister appointed to her Economic Priorities Advisory Committee of the ACT, only a couple are in any way associated with private enterprise. One of those was Mr George Snow, and guess what?
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