Page 6005 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 8 December 2010
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Construction of the development of residential suburbs in south Tralee will, we believe, be placing residents in an area of unacceptable aircraft noise. I appreciate there has been some disagreement over technical aspects of exactly how much people will be affected. But noise contour maps indicate that noise will be unacceptable. When you look at the maps, common sense tells you that noise will be unacceptable, but it is probably better to rely on the science.
Let us for a moment focus on the people who will move into south Tralee. We can say that they are not our problem; that they will be New South Wales residents and we should not worry. But we know that many of them will work in the ACT, their children may attend ACT schools and they may well attend ACT hospitals. They will have friends and networks in the ACT. They will, in many ways, effectively be members of our community. I am not sure that I can with good conscience expect people to move into their new houses at south Tralee and then suddenly realise that the aircraft noise is not so easily switched off.
In fact, aircraft noise has been associated with interrupted sleep and reduced health outcomes. Canberra—and I imagine even south Tralee—has quite low background noise, particularly at night time where it sits at about 30 decibels. Ironically, this is likely to make the impact of aircraft noise more likely to be felt as the greater the difference between the background ambient noise and the disturbance the more likely it is that the disturbance is noticed. The World Health Organisation says that for a good night’s sleep noise events over 45 decibels should be avoided. Most people wake up at 45 decibels. But if you are living in the quiet ACT, this is even more obvious.
It is probably fair to say that there should be more work on long-term health impacts. However, a study in 2008 in the European Heart Journal concluded that its sleeping subjects had a clear increase in blood pressure when exposed to aircraft noise, starting at 35 decibels. This occurred even when the subjects of this study did not wake up. So your health can be affected and you may not even be aware of it.
This makes it a quality of life issue. Having to live with aircraft noise simply reduces quality of life. Ameliorating noise impacts may effectively mean needing to insulate houses against noise. Unfortunately, this can mean needing to close windows, especially at night time—something that only leads to people using even more air conditioning than they already do. It will discourage families from spending time outside and it will spoil the ambience that we should aspire to in our suburbs. People want to be able to move into a new home and know that they can spend time outside and have barbecues and that their children can play in the backyard without having to yell to be heard as a plane goes over.
The point has been made to me that the development at south Tralee will meet the Australian standard AS2021 and I acknowledge the work that has been done to achieve that. But AS2021 is a building standard. All it does is specify how buildings are to be constructed to insulate against aircraft noise. That might be a valid thing to do if you already had a house under a flight path. But let us be clear: you cannot use this standard to insulate your back garden. This standard is not a replacement for proper planning to avoid the impacts of aircraft noise in the first place.
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