If translated into plain English, the Airports Amendment Bill 2010 introduced by Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese in federal parliament this morning will try to stop developers ‘stealing’ them for housing estates, shopping malls and nursing homes (presumably for those both aged and deaf).

Is it a brave bill, or is it too late, or critically flawed?

Ever since the privatisation of Australian airports saw the sale of the major and secondary city airports around the country for around $10 billion by a Howard government, there have been fierce protests from consumers, noise affected suburbs, and airlines of all sizes. From Qantas down to commuter airlines, private flying schools and private aircraft owners, complaints have been made about price gouging and inappropriate developments.

While the Albanese bill isn’t concerned about people having to pay more for a few days parking at Sydney or Melbourne airports than the airfare to another city, it will cause heartburn for airport owners and developers.

Your A380 flights in capital cities in five or six years time will not be arrive down neon canyons onto runways flanked by malls, casinos, amusement parks or car showrooms.

Any hopes that certain interests may have held that Archerfield, Moorabbin, Bankstown or Camden might follow Hoxton Park, and became a big barn logistics and retail precincts seem to be dashed by the bill.

It corrects the indifference under the Howard administration as to whether or not airports continued to be airports, or became non-aviation mega malls, so long as the price from the privatisation process came in as high as possible.

But much of the damage is already done at these secondary airports, according to the general aviation sector, and there are constant complaints from smaller flight-related businesses at general aviation airports. Like upsets at Bankstown Airport over lease increases because the owners are entitled to set the charges as high as they would be for the alternative non-aviation uses. These problems will be blocked if the bill becomes law.

There is also a probability of conflict between the airlines and the government over the bill’s standards for increased community and local and state government consultations over changes to flight paths.

The latest navigational technology and fuel saving procedures involve as near to straight line ‘gliding’ approaches to runway thresholds, unlike the contorted ‘noise sharing’ profiles in which a huge amount of political capital has been invested by Coalition and Labor governments for more than a decade.

On a strict reading, the bill appears to be requiring the environmentally wasteful burning of fuel to ‘share’ noise over suburbs where jets would normally never fly to continue, without regard to the reduced emissions that come with concentrating arrivals and departures over tightly defined corridors.

Is this the sort of parliament that will grapple with airport noise rules versus cleaner flights, and slam the till shut on the greedy fingers of developers who see more money in malls than runways?

We should find out soon.