Sydney airport curfew needs to be relaxed: tourism lobby group

Tough curfew laws on Sydney’s international airport should be watered down, tourism industry leaders say.

Margy Osmond, the chief executive of the Tourism and Transport Forum. Picture: Regi Varghese

Tough curfew laws on Sydney’s international airport should be watered down as part of efforts to encourage further expansion of the nation’s $130 billion tourism sector, industry leaders say.

In its 2017 federal budget submission, the Tourism & Transport Forum, whose members include Qantas, Singapore Airlines and Virgin Australia, also called for aircraft movements at the nation’s biggest airport to rise from 80 flights an hour to 90.

But the group is calling for an increase in so-called “shoulder period operations” for inter­national flights to start at 5am, rather than the current 6am, and want the curfew to start at midnight rather than 11pm.

“We are calling for more flexib­ility in the shoulder period of the curfew,” forum chief executive Margy Osmond said. She claimed aircraft were quieter now than when the rules were introduced more than 20 years ago. “These changes will ensure tourism growth into the future­ and … that Sydney airport is able to maximise its effic­iency,” the forum’s submission said.

Ms Osmond said Sydney, as Australia’s gateway city, needed to maximise the potential growth of Chinese tourism. “It’s a market where only 3 per cent of Chinese have a passport: the potential is enormous, but if we are going to take advantage of it, it is all about critical gateway infrastructure and one of those is Sydney airport. This issue of curfews can’t be put in the too-hard basket.”

Ms Osmond said it was important to free up the curfews at Sydney because it would be years before a second airport opened there.

 

In its budget submission, the tourism lobby group also called for increased cruise infrastructure, given Sydney Harbour’s ports are full and cruising has grown from 100,000 passengers a year to more than one million.

The forum is backing Carnival Corporation’s long-held proposal to access the navy’s Garden Island­ on Sydney Harbour, with Ms Osmond saying there were no other alternatives.

“Increasingly, the rest of the country has started to understand the incredible value of cruise ships. If we don’t sort out Sydney the whole country is going to have problems attracting the big cruise lines.

“We are going to struggle to get the great boats here and a continuing growing stream of them if we can’t sort out Sydney. Cruise ships boost local economies.”

The forum also called for Airbnb operators to face the same regul­atory obligations as traditional, short-term commercial accommodation providers, including the payment of the same amount of income tax.

The forum also wants funding for Tourism Australia, the government’s key marketing authority, to be maintained, saying its budget has dropped in real terms by about 9 per cent since 2008, corresponding with an 18 per cent drop in Australia’s share of Oceania and Southeast Asian arrivals.

The forum says the outsourcing of the Tourist Refund Scheme, which allows departing inter­national travellers to claim a GST refund, is another area that needs overhauling. It said the scheme should be better managed, given that the processing causes long airport queues, contributing to terminal congestion, delays to plane departures and airlines’ on-time performance.

Federal Tourism Minister Steve Ciobo, who is in the US, could not comment because of time differences. His spokeswoman said the submissions would be addressed in the May budget.