O'Connor Greg; Rurawhe AdrianGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): I stand today to speak on a very local issue although saying that it is something that vicariously members in this House will be involved in. As they fly home tonight to their various locations I invite them to look out the window as your plane crosses the wonderful Ōhāriu electorate and the wise among you will have noticed that there's been a change in flight track. A flight that used to go straight up the harbour now turns left and goes across Khandallah Johnsonville and Broadmeadows bringing with it new issues not least of all is new noise. This of course has been the result of changes—operational changes—that are impacting directly on the electorate. Now Wellington is a wonderful city it has an airport really very close to its centre and of course there are always going to be issues with airport noise. Having previously lived in the eastern suburbs I understand that it's something that many people in different suburbs around airports in New Zealand live with. However this issue is a change. Recently Airways have introduced a new flight path and it's around the DMAPS system. The DMAPS is the Wellington Divergent Missed Approach Protection System. Again for members who often land at Wellington Airport when flights currently land there is a four-mile gap between the flight taking off and the flight landing. That distance being reduced means there is an increased chance on a missed approach that the missing plane will actually connect with one that has just taken off. Therefore a new flight path has been created and that now goes left so that the planes are on different flight paths and this is the issue I wish to speak about today. As a local MP it's always a little bit of an issue. There's often a displacement issue involved here because when noise moves to one part of the city often it comes from another. However in this case the flights were further over the harbour under the old approach. Under the new approach they are actually now hitting land much lower and much more closely causing this issue. Now the decision was made by Airways to bring this approach in and more importantly a decision was made not to consult with locals. One monitor was put in place that did pick up what was thought to be acceptable noise. However it was introduced on 1 December 2022. No notification was made. The first notification was when Wellington Airport put on their public site that this was actually occurring. But until the complaints started coming in and considerably more noise was noticed by residents only then was it seemingly noticed that this change needed to be addressed.A local group of residents known as Plane Sense have done an excellent job of coming together and now looking at what has happened and there will be a public meeting on this shortly. The main issue—and this is an issue that while it is very much a local issue all should be aware of—is that when an operational change is brought about like this for purely operational reasons if some sort of template had been put over the rationale it would have instantly become obvious that there was going to be some kickback from locals. Now I don't want any other Wellingtonians or anyone else to say this is a group of nimbies. It is not. These are people that directly—literally their houses now in many cases are shaking with the effect of these new flight paths. So it has actually brought about considerable change to the lives of many people in this area. It's not going to be a simple matter of just reprogramming the computer to put this back to the old way. What's going to happen now is that as a result of pressure by myself and the local group there will be monitoring stations put in place four of them in Johnsonville Broadmeadows and Khandallah and it is very likely that—and I'm confident as are many in this group and many in my electorate—the noise level results that will be monitored will be considerably higher than were predicted. In this case there will be need for Airways and Wellington Airport to get back to the drawing board and actually start ensuring that if you're going to bring in these operational changes however well intentioned there needs to be consultation with the local community so at least if nothing else they can be prepared for this and some sort of mediation some sort of remedial action can be taken. Thank you for this opportunity to speak to this to what is I believe a very very local issue. Thank you.SPEAKER: I understand Dr James McDowall would like a four-minute call.