I rise today to speak on the Aviation Consumer Protection and associated bills, a package designed to address well documented failures in how airline passengers are treated and protected and to ensure complaints from communities impacted by aircraft noise such as Bradfield are properly managed.

For too long, Australia's aviation market has had weak, fragmented and poorly enforced consumer protections, leaving passengers with unclear rights, limited resources and inconsistent service quality. These bills set out to change that through the establishment of an aviation consumer protection framework that seeks to bring existing passenger rights sitting variously across individual airline terms and conditions, general consumer law and voluntary industry standards together into statutory enforceable obligations.

Importantly, the bill establishes the Aviation Consumer Protection Authority which will monitor industry behaviour, investigate systemic issues, enforce obligations and hold airlines and airports accountable. At the onset, I should say that moving toward increased consumer protection is welcome. It's a good thing.

The 2024 National Aviation White Paper highlighted the need for stronger consumer protections and strict oversight alongside clearer expectations of industry. These bills make a positive start.

Service quality and accountability in the aviation sector has been declining with falling on time performance and increasing passenger dissatisfaction. Within the context of a highly concentrated and structurally uncompetitive market, it's right for the government to step in and ensure that consumers are protected.

Because let's face it, many of us have all been at the wrong end of a cancelled flight and left with that sinking feeling that we may not even get to our destination that day. And knowing that there is clear recourse, including access to new independent Aviation Consumer Ombudsperson, will be a comfort for many.

But I also note that many reservations have been made about these bills, about the lack of detail in the legislation itself, about the complexity of the framework and about potential for duplication and inconsistency with other regulations and ultimately whether it will deliver meaningful redress for consumers.

Important questions remain regarding how these initiatives are to be funded and the ability of airlines and airports to simply pass the cost of compliance onto consumers. And I'm not convinced that the changes to aircraft noise management under the new framework strike at the core of this important issue that affects parts of my community of Bradfield.

Deputy Speaker, the history of aircraft noise management in Sydney is long and complex. In my short time as a representative on the Sydney Airport Community Forum, I've learned that the long-term operating plan, which dictates how Airservices Australia spreads aircraft movements across various departure and arrival modes to ensure aircraft noise and emissions are shared across the Sydney Basin, has an established target of a 17% load for the north.

I have also learnt that in practice this load is more than double what it should be. The reason for that is unclear, whether Airservices Australia is either incapable of or unwilling to implement the long-term operating plan in the way that it was originally conceived, despite this plan being subject to a ministerial direction.

Either way, the result has been that communities to the north of Sydney Airport are continually subject to more aircraft noise than they should be. And with Airservices Australia operating its own noise complaint service, it's not surprising that the experience of my community has been that any complaints about aircraft noise have fallen, pun intended, on deaf ears.

So the establishment of an Aircraft Noise Ombudsperson that is separate from Airservices Australia is therefore welcome, and this should give the community some greater confidence in both complaints handling and reporting, as well as relevant community consultation processes.

However, while acknowledging that the scope of the Ombudsperson includes review of the agency's management of aircraft noise, it is apparent that the role is primarily concerned with how complaints are handled and the presentation of aircraft noise information, rather than actually addressing the cause of the problem.

It would make perfect sense for the Aircraft Noise Ombudsperson's remit to include a specific responsibility for ensuring that Airservices Australia complies with its obligation to minimise the impact of aircraft noise on the community through stricter adherence to the long-term operating plan.

Because what's the point of having a world-class complaints handling process that does not actually address the cause of the complaint? Because for communities like mine, Deputy Speaker, mine in Bradfield, aircraft noise is a daily reality, particularly for the communities in South Turramurra and West Pymble.

They are impacted by this every single day. This package is an important and overdue step towards stronger aviation consumer protections. It creates real pressure and opportunity for the Department and Airservices Australia to work more closely together to deliver better outcomes.

It's just unfortunate that this set of bills, with so many positives, leaves unanswered questions about whether it will deliver reduced and a fairer share of aircraft noise for the people of Bradfield.