Runway Racket Opens Up A Pandora's Box

Sydney Morning Herald

Friday March 10, 1995

Matthew Moore

The box turned up last Friday.

Lew Hird, the No Aircraft Noise party candidate in Drummoyne, found it on his veranda when he got home from work. It was outside his front door, stuffed full of bumper stickers with a big red line through a big black jet and two words: LABOR LIED.

Mr Hird doesn't know how many stickers there are, probably 10,000. And he doesn't know who left them for him.

Apart from the two words, there's nothing written on the stickers themselves, no "authorised by" statement, not even the name of the printer. But someone thought the No Aircraft Noise party might hand them out, perhaps giving an anti-Labor candidate an edge in a seat which looks desperately close.

But it was a pretty naive hope. The party's credibility relies on the fact that it blames all the mainstream parties for the third runway. Its 400 paid-up members have voted not to direct preferences.

While the stickers look destined for the bin, the airport issue does not. Among the bullnose verandas and the Federation houses of the leafy electorate of Drummoyne, the planes that often scream overhead every 90 seconds are at the heart of the great political unknown - which political party stands to gain or lose the most from the aircraft noise fury.

Labor holds the seat by a 3.7 per cent margin with one of those doggedly relentless campaigners political parties love. John Murray knows every street and seems to know most of the people. He's been there since '82, weathering the Greiner flood that washed away his Government in '88, and reckons the planes are not a big enough issue to flush him out this time.

On his reckoning, only 4,700 of the 37,000 electors in his long and narrow seat are sufficiently affected by aircraft noise for it to affect their vote. And most of the 4,700 are in the wealthier parts of the electorate where more people vote Liberal, so his opponent should suffer at least as much as he will. Besides, Murray says, many of those 4,700 care about other issues more than aircraft noise.

To prove his theory, he took me on one of his 7 am walks down streets where they know what the belly of a jet looks like. Sure enough, the first bloke we saw said you got used to it, it wouldn't affect his vote. The next said he was a swinging voter but there were other issues more important. "Daylight saving," he said.

The plumber leaving for work also fitted the theory. "I have lived here 27 years and I firmly believe we are getting less noise now than we were with those jets then."

But others were fuming. "This is dreadful, the No Noise party will be getting my vote ... whatever the facts are, whatever the politicians say, the perception is this is going to get worse, so people are selling and getting out," said one man.

Murray ran his line that he was "the original third runway protester", that he had held four public meetings on the issue, spent $4,000 of his own money - but the man was tired of listening.

The woman walking the two retrievers was sick of explanations, too. She said she had always voted Labor but not this time: "It's the whole story of false promises ... I am voting No Noise party and not giving a preference."

In his first election campaign, Mr Hird firmly believes he will win outright. Doorknocking 25 houses in 3< hours last Saturday, he said, he got 75 per cent support. He would be "very disappointed" if he got less than 10 per cent, a result today's Herald poll shows is not out of the question.

The Liberal candidate, Mr Michael Megna disavows involvement with the "Labor Lies" stickers but it's a message he's comfortable with. The accountant said aircraft noise was the issue people most cared about.

"It's undeniable, I have been lied to. A lot of people who were not going to get the noise are getting it."

The Greiner Government campaigned relentlessly in support of construction of the third runway but Mr Megna said it was never a policy that he supported.

If you want to get elected in Drummoyne, you'd better hate that runway.