James Morrow: Chris Minns’ housing policy is a Sydney flight of fancy

The deeply local, self-interested nature of Sydney’s politics means that from airports to apartments, the greater good winds up falling prey to who has the loudest voice, writes James Morrow.

One of the fun things about living under – and I mean directly under – the flight path is that you quickly learn to identify aircraft by sound.

The low whoosh of an A380, lumbering pelican-like into the sky, is instantly recognizable and totally different from the screaming Pratt & Whitney engines on one of the last majestic 747s still in service in cargo fleets.

And there is no better way to regret your life choices than to hear that distinctive turbofan swish-wish and look up to see a private Gulfstream or Challenger zipping over the back yard, delivering its very VIP cargo into Kingsford-Smith.

The other fun thing is enjoying the relentless political activism that comes with having an airport nearby – particularly when the local member, Anthony Albanese, just happens to be the prime minister.

In recent weeks there has been yet another push to loosen some of the controls on what are euphemistically termed “movements” – i.e., noisy things like takeoffs and landings – at Kingsford Smith.

Those who live under the flight path quickly learn to identify planes ... and play politics.

One of the biggies on the wish list is to change the rules on the number of movements allowed per hour: right now, they are limited to 20 every 15 minutes, but those backing a change want the rule to be 80 every hour.

By resetting the count on the hour rather than the quarter hour, airlines reckon they could manage more than they do now, i.e., about 72 or 73 takeoffs and landings every 60 minutes, meaning fewer delays and more passengers in and out the door.

Airlines want to increase the number of takeoffs and landings at Sydney Airport.

Even as someone who lives close enough to the end of the runway to see that 18F hasn’t put her seat upright for landing, this doesn’t seem like that big a deal.

But, of course, the politics are diabolical here.

Albanese’s seat of Grayndler is home to a strong contingent of feral Greens voters who hate the airport and aren’t always that keen on Labor, either.

At one point in the last decade, it was the local Greens’ official policy to call for Sydney Airport to be closed – presumably with an eye towards turning its runways into organic farming collectives and its terminals into re-education camps (not that they don’t sometimes feel like that already).

Oct 28 1996 picRay/Strange. Anthony Albanese, ALP member for /Grayndler, /NSW, speaking against the Andrews Bill in federal parliament. anti-euthanasia

And for as long as he’s been in parliament, Albanese has done everything he could to sit on any increase in flights.

In 1996, his first speech to parliament said the government should “lower the number of aircraft movements” at Kingsford-Smith.

Back in 2013, when he was deputy PM, he kiboshed 11 extra international flights a week, even though they were allowed in “shoulder” periods.

Yet at the same time he has been supportive of more flights elsewhere.

In Brisbane, Albanese has been called a hypocrite by locals living near the airport for opposing a cap on their second runway despite pushing for pretty much the same restrictions in his own neighborhood.

It is also no surprise that the new airport being built out in western Sydney will not be subject to any curfew – though its backers point out that its environs hardly as densely packed as the inner-west or the eastern suburbs which really cop it on days when the east-west runway is in full swing.

Opposition leader Chris Smith delivering the Bradfield Oration and throwing down the gauntlet on housing.

All of this is a perfect case study of the very Sydney and indeed Australian way that everything comes down to mortgages, money, and tribe.

You would not have to be much of a cynic to note the treatment that politically sensitive voters in a part of town where prices have skyrocketed might get different treatment, even at the expense of a bigger picture for a better Sydney.

As someone with a self-declared interest in all this, it is a conundrum.

But in different ways, as Michael Corleone once said, we are all part of the same hypocrisy.

And the coming state election will only make things worse.

Housing is shaping up to be a key issue and already the battle lines are drawn.

Last week at The Daily Telegraph’s Bradfield Oration, opposition leader Chris Minns laid out his vision for housing.

It’s one thing to be in favour of more housing in North Sydney, but where will it go?

While Minns has cleverly positioned himself with many conservatives as somewhere to the right of Matt Kean, whom many voters worry has far too much say in the Perrottet government, his rhetoric on density more than raised eyebrows.

The Labor leader called for a “fair deal for all of Sydney” and said more density should be pushied in the eastern suburbs and north shore.

Never mind that housing density in much of the east and in places like North Sydney is some of the highest in the nation, the implication is that posh Liberal voters need to be punished with people.

It is also fair to ask what the end game of Labor’s policy is: More home ownership, or “affordable” rentals dropped into blue ribbon electorates with an eye towards changing longer term voting patterns, as has happened in Melbourne with the rise of apartment living?

But the westies versus silvertails flex is an odd one, and gives Dom Perrottet a wedge not only against Labor but also would-be teals.

If Minns is going to go down this road, and start targeting “surplus public land” for apartment blocks, he is going to come up against some pretty powerful resistance among those who might previously have given him their cautious support.