Scott Morrison emerges to fight early morning Sydney Airport noise

afr.com:

Infrastructure Department officials are considering cancelling special allowances given to major cargo operators to fly outside the Sydney Airport curfew after Scott Morrison wrote to Labor demanding it be scrapped.

In one of the few domestic policy interventions by the former prime minister since the Coalition lost the last federal election, Mr Morrison said special dispensation for Qantas, Team Global Express and another carrier to fly freight out of Sydney Airport was likely to be against the law.The special rights were first granted to the operators – Australia Post has partnered with Qantas for airfreight – by the Coalition during the COVID-19 pandemic as the number of passenger flights fell. Airfreight is most often transported on passenger flights, and the lack of travel meant new arrangements were required to fly cargo earlier in the day.

Despite the end of the pandemic, the government agreed to extend the special dispensation until Western Sydney Airport opens in 2026. It is expected that the new airport will not have a curfew.

In his letter to Infrastructure Minister Catherine King, Mr Morrison wrote that the residents of Kurnell, in his electorate of Cook in Sydney’s south, were “unfairly denied the protections” of the Sydney Airport curfew.

The curfew prevents flights after 11pm and before 6pm. There have been between 10 and 18 flights every night under the exemption.

“No doubt a business case could be mounted for the abolition of the curfew in its entirety, but that would not be consistent with the interests of residents who live adjacent to the airport,” his letter reads, adding that legal advice sought from Mark Robinson SC concluded that “the dispensations contravene relevant provisions of all three