Commercial Aviation Update

It is also notable that the FAC is not attempting to recover even half of its losses on ‘airside’ operations. It recognises that punitive measures would just drive business elsewhere.

The real issue is that the FAC’s charter forces it to achieve full recovery of costs and to pay dividends and interest to the Commonwealth on extraordinarily high asset values. Buildings that were paid for years ago are suddenly worth a lot of money. Land that is dedicated to airports has overnight become as valuable as the home or factory site outside the airport gate.

This principle extends the user-pays principle beyond reasonable bounds. Private aviation activity, in particular, should be considered no different from riding a bicycle in a park, or driving a car on a public highway. Park roads and other facilities being built from time to time have to be funded by someone, of course. But land which sections of the public can freely use is a community asset. It is worth nothing in the commercial sense so long as it is zoned as a park or a highway. That is at least partly true of airports.

To ask the recreational flying public to service this imaginary debt is unfair and discriminatory. Charter flights, for example, have greater ability to recover additional costs from hirers and should also pay for actual facilities used. But why should rents be set on outside levels when the land element of that rent is artifici- ally-based? In one sense, this principle is already recognised by the Commonwealth in its devolvement of responsibility to the FAC. The FAC is encouraged to make better use of airport land and is busily doing so. Income from idle or unrequired areas of airports will be a welcome aid to the budget.

But secondary airports occupy vastly different amounts of land and much of it is not required for true airport-related uses. While Bankstown for example is constrained, Jandakot has land it will probably never need. It is an accident of history that land of a certain area is owned by the FAC. The handover from the Commonwealth took no account of each airport’s specific land needs, only of what happened to be there at the time.

Equally, some airport land is required as a buffer for the surrounding community. The aviation industry does not need such land but it is required to ‘own’ it to satisfy environmental or other requirements imposed on the industry by local residents (many of whom selected their sites deliberately in full knowledge of the airport’s existence).

The industry already pays a huge amount to the environmental cause by designing and constructing quiet aircraft and engines, by using carefully planned flight paths and, in some cases, by closing down its airports at night. To ask it to then pay for land over which it has no control is too much. Worse, no one has ever paid for that land anyway. There is no real debt to service. This tax’ is no more than a device to fill the Treasury’s coffers.

The industry now has time to consider firstly its response to the FAC charges proposal. Suggestions and comments will be welcomed by GAA (and by the FAC). Secondly, members of the industry should make known their views on airport land valuations to their local members. Decisions on those matters are made by Parliament. And not just on the 17 FAC airports. The Commonwealth has another 39 airports left to sell!

88 Conference

If Parliamentary duties permit, Transport Minister, Mr Peter Morris, is planning to attend the 1988 Annual Conference organised by the Queensland Region of GAA for the week starting July 18. Location is the Whitsunday Terraces resort at Airlie Beach. Registration enquiries should go to Lorraine Tighe at (07) 860 4511.

Mascot Saga Continues

Getting things right at Sydney Airport must surely be one of the longest running exercises in Australian aviation. But, finally, there are signs that a solution may not be too far away.

The FAC is discussing the subject with the State Government while GAA has had recent meetings with both Transport and Tourist Ministers in NSW, Mr Bruce Baird and Mr Gary West, both of whom are keenly interested in the problems. The State Chamber of Commerce and Industry under David Abba has now decided to relaunch its Sydney Airport Task Force in an effort to protect the interests of tourists as well as business and manufacturing companies.

Senator Gareth Evans, Federal Minister for Transport and Communications has told ABC Radio that decisions on conges- tion problems “will have to be made sooner rather than later”. He says the options are: a second runway; separate commuter and light aircraft runways; and better use of other airports.

GAA agrees with Senator Evans. We also agree with Arts Minister, Mr Gary Punch, that a firm programme for development of the Badgery’s Creek site should be adopted. But Mr Punch’s hope that this will solve problems at Mascot is misguided.

More attractive alternatives to Mascot are obviously one way of easing the burden and at the same time providing a better range of services to Sydney’s growing and spreading population. But Mascot will always be what it is today- the hub of the NSW and Australian aviation networks and we cannot wait 20 years hoping for action at Badgery’s Creek. Now is the time!