LeeR Airport 6/12/00

[Stafford Sanders]

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Lee Rhiannon MLC news release 6/12/00
Greens Call for Kurnell Airport Veto 

The Greens have called on the Federal Government to immediately rule out Kurnell as the site of a second Sydney airport.
"Kurnell is the birthplace of European settlement of Australia", says The Greens NSW Upper House MP Lee Rhiannon. "It also occupies a place of enormous environmental significance - with its irreplaceable dunes, mangroves, birds, frogs, and importance to nearby Botany Bay National Park.
"Kurnell's reward for all this has been to keep getting dumped on by a succession of Federal and State Governments - copping oil refineries, sandmining, and inappropriate residential developments.
"On top of all that comes the news that the Howard Government is seriously considering Kurnell as a major airport site.
"This is of course driven by the crudest of election-eve motives. The Liberals want to take the pressure off marginal seats in an election year - to remove the impression of inevitability surrounding Badgerys Creek as the preferred second airport site.
"The move is all the more distasteful, coming from Mr Howard who said on July 3 1987:	
	'In the last 200 years Kurnell has suffered from neglect and insufficient steps have been taken to preserve and rehabilitate this vitally important and uniquely historic part of our heritage.'
"And he went on to assert that
	'to the extent that (environment and economic development) may clash at Kurnell, then our clear obligation is to our environment and heritage.'
"Is this Mr Howard's idea of 'preserving and rehabilitating' Kurnell's 'environment and heritage' - to saddle it with airport runways?"
Adds Cathy Power of Sutherland Greens: "The Kurnell community has been taken by shock by this development. People are outraged - some families have been here for four generations and they're not about to see the National Park and the Towra Point wetlands endangered by runways and aircraft.
"That's not to mention the traffic problems getting in and out of the peninsula - and more pollution across the already over-polluted Sydney Basin.
"What next - runways right across Botany Bay?" 

Media inquiries: 	Stafford Sanders   	ph. (02) 9230 3549 or 0409 787 911
More information:	Cathy Power		ph. (02) 9668 9220	


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