Back to the future

The pace of development in Sydney’s outer suburbs makes finding a site for a second airport increasingly difficult. Yet the need, stamped “urgent” well over two decades ago, is now very urgent indeed.

The study says: “The steering committee well understands why solving the issues raised in this review have been conten-tious. However, the option of doing noth-ing is no longer available and the costs of deferring action are unacceptable. ” But for all its laudable thoroughness, the recommendations of this latest in a long line of Sydney airport studies could hardly be considered revelations.

The headline proposal, to build a second airport either at Badgerys Creek or Wil-ton, was the headline proposal of the first major study on the subject in 1986. Its call to increase the peak-hour cap on aircraft movements at Kingsford-Smith from 80 to 85 would, by the study’s own estima-tion, buy the present airport only an extra year or two before it reaches deadlock.

Other ideas, including opening parts of RAAF Base Richmond and Bankstown Airport to limited commercial traffic, have been floated before in the long and meandering course of this case study in government inaction. AVIATION And as the study’s chilly reception in Canberra and Sydney underscored, the option of doing nothing seems very much alive. In revealing the findings, Federal Transport Minister Anthony Albanese promptly rejected its main recommenda-tions – Badgerys Creek and raising the aircraft cap.

Instead, Mr Albanese called for the establishment of a “joint body with NSW to look at implementing a long-term strategy” – in other words, more studies – that he hoped would benefit from bipar-tisan cooperation.

Bipartisanship was indeed much in evidence, though not the sort the airport commission might have hoped for. The Liberal NSW government was in such opposition to the study’s findings that it declined to be publicly associated with the report’s release.

Nor should the cold shoulder come as a surprise. Both major parties rejected the Badgerys Creek option in the early 2000s, prompting NSW to sell off some of the land to developers. Rampant growth in the area means ever more residents who don’t want an airport in their backyard, and the Labor federal government has repeatedly restated its opposition to the site in recent years.

Recognising that Badgerys Creek was essentially a bridge too far, the commis-sion pointed to Wilton as a next best op-tion, though a less appealing one due to its greater distance from Sydney, about 80km from the CBD, and its lack of existing in-frastructure. Other problems with the site have been raised in past studies, particu-larly the area’s hilly terrain and proximity to water catchments.

Short history of the second airport that isn’t

Short As a genuinely complicated and inevitably controversial subject, the selec-tion of a location for a second Sydney airport is a natural subject for a govern-ment study. So natural, apparently, that successive governments have spent three decades studying it.

Tstudy, produced by an inter-governmental commission known as the Major Air-port Needs of Sydney group. Issued in 1986 – by then it was a “long awaited” study, as these things usually are – it recommended building a second airport either in Badgerys Creek to the city’s west or Wilton to the south-west. These may sound like familiar ideas.

The federal Labor government led by Bob Hawke opted for Badgerys Creek and between 1986 and 1991, 1,700 hectares were acquired as a site for the future airport. At the same time, Mr Hawke and his successor, Paul Keating, approved plans to build a third runway at Mascot.

The latter move, which came amid significant public outcry, would come to bpolitical capital and made possible the argument that a second airport wasn’t really necessary.

Still, Mr Keating pushed on, budgeting $762 million to build the Badgerys C John Howard, elected in 1996, cancelled the airport in favour of further study. Initially a proponent of building the second airport at Holsworthy, Mr Howard eventually came around to Badgerys Creek and re-confirmed it as the preferred site in 1999. Environmental impact studies followed.

Meanwhile, Sydney’s west was growing fast and its parliamentary seats were emerging as key swing seats in federal elections, a fact not lost on citizen groups who did not want an airport in their backyard.

Oopponents in 1999 to “remind both Howard and [then opposition leader Kim] Beazley . . . that the next federal election could be won or lost in the western Sydney seats of Parramatta, Macarthur, Lindsay and Macquarie”. As if they n As opposition grew, a government transport study also released in 1999 further clouded the picture with proposals to shift regional air travel to Banks-town Airport, build only a small general aviation airport at Badgerys Creek and lay tracks for a fast train between Sydney and Canberra, while exploring high-speed rail links to connect Sydney with Melbourne and Brisbane.

Thus muddled by study and roiled by opposition, the issue of a second airport was moved to the back-burner. The ALP formally withdrew its support for Badgerys Creek in 2003, while Coalition Transport Minister John Anderson declared the same year that – “following exhaustive examination” – it had be-come clear that Kingsford-Smith would be able to handle air traffic demands “for a long time to come”.

The NSW government began releasing land adjacent to the airport site to developers, ensuring an ever-larger constituency of airport opponents and all but sealing the fate of Badgerys Creek.

More study followed, including a parliamentary investigation into the possibility of building a second airport at Well’s Creek, which was quickly dismissed.

The Rudd government, elected in 2007, took up the issue anew and began its own energetic search for an airport site – this time outside the Sydney Basin. It studied options including a freight-only airport at Camden to relieve congestion at Kingsford-Smith, converting some or all of RAAF Richmond for chigh-speed rail.

All of which brings us to the present, with the latest “long-awaited” study recommending, somewhat embarrassingly, basically the same things as the fi And while the site is too remote and undeveloped to be ideal, it is not nearly remote enough to avoid public outcry as made very clear by local politicians and newspaper editors who have lined up to bash the Wilton plan in recent weeks.

In a scathing editorial the Macarthur Chronicle said:“Imagine flying into an airport at Wilton after a long trip – then getting stuck in the world’s biggest traffic jam. ” It went on to list other ways the site is unsuitable for a major airport, ranging from frequent fog to undisturbed native forests.

The Campbelltown, Camden and Wol-londilly councils all staunchly oppose the plan, with one local MP calling it “ab-solutely ludicrous” and another saying it would go ahead only “over my dead body”.

Local officials say 450,000 people would be affected by a Wilton airport, a number that could double if present development trends continue. These might be optimis-tic figures but they’re still dwarfed by the number of people who would be incon-venienced by an airport at Badgerys Creek or by any expansion of Kingsford-Smith.

Indeed, the refusal of the federal government to consider even the modest increase in the peak-hour cap at Mascot shows how little appetite exists for prod-ding that entrenched and well-organised source of opposition. It’s no surprise that Mr Albanese represents an inner-Sydney district that abuts Mascot.

However, not all the bodies who op-pose the various airport plans agree on everything. No Aircraft Noise, a Sydney group who advocates closing Kingsford- Smith and has even fielded unsuccessful candidates for the NSW parliament, has suggested Wilton as the site most suitable for further study.

And predictably, some who oppose Wilton say that perhaps Badgerys Creek would be best.

Nor are all sources of opposition quite as obvious as citizen groups. Developers would oppose any plan that takes land off the market and lowers surrounding property values. Established airlines such as Qantas and Virgin Australia probably would view a second airport as a source of increased competition from budget car-riers scared off by the high cost of doing business at Kingsford-Smith.

Sydney Airport Holdings, which oper-ates Kingsford-Smith, released a plan to revamp the terminal structure at the current airport late last year that was seen as an effort to stave off competition from a second airport. In a statement, SAH said the latest airport study underestimated the potential for capacity growth at Kings-ford-Smith resulting from the overhaul.

All of this underscores why plans to build a second airport – seen as an urgent priority for most of the past quarter-cen-tury – have made virtually no measurable headway in almost three decades.

The eventual need for a second airport might be widely acknowledged, but any specific plan to build one finds itself with few real supporters and brigades of vehe-ment opponents. If politicians hoped that another study would produce new and less controversial ideas, the lesson may be that after so many years of study there are no new ideas to be found. What is needed is political consensus and, more problemati-cally, political will.

The study notes: “The spread of urban development in the Sydney Basin means it is already very difficult to find a suitable site. The opportunity to secure a suitable site is likely to disappear altogether if ac-tion is not put in train now. ” But speaking of trains … a third way, advocated by Barry O’Farrell’s NSW gov-ernment and explored by the Rudd gov-ernment after it took office in 2007, would build Sydney’s second airport outside the Sydney Basin altogether.

Options range from a freight-only ter-minal that could free extra passenger ca-pacity at Kingsford-Smith to an expanded Canberra Airport – or a new airport somewhere else – connected to Sydney via a 50-minute fast train.

This would be the most expensive op-tion with the fast train to Canberra alone costing about $8-10 billion and a larger high-speed rail network from Melbourne to the Gold Coast costing 10 times that.

The latest study dismisses the Canberra option as too far and too costly but as some commentators note, finding money at this point might be easier than finding the political will to make an unpopular decision.

Needless to say, any such options doubtless would require considerable fur-ther study.

Key findings of Sydney airport study

The Australian and NSW governments commissioned an independ-ent steering committee of government and aviation industry ex-perts to study the Sydney Basin’s aviation needs in 2009. Initially expected by mid 2011, the group’s report, the Joint Study on Avia-tion Capacity for the Sydney Region, was presented on March 2.

The road to aircraft deadlock • Sydney’s Kingsford-Smith Airport will reach peak-hour capacity by 2020 and full capacity by 2027. By 2035, the airport will have virtually no options for increasing capacity even through the use of larger aircraft.

• To avoid serious economic consequences, the Sydney region will need a second airport by 2030.

• Failing to act will cost the economy $6 billion in lost growth by 2035 and $60 billion by 2060, half of that coming from NSW.

• Rapid urban development will make finding a site for a second airport increasingly difficult.

The study recommends • Building a second airport at Badgerys Creek in the city’s west or as a second-best option at Wilton, 80km to the south-west. The government has rejected Badgerys Creek.

• Increasing the peak-hour cap on aircraft movements at King-sford-Smith from 80 to 85, a move the government has also rejected.

• Improving public transport links to Kingsford-Smith.

• Opening RAAF Base Richmond to limited commercial traffic.

• Opening Bankstown Airport, currently reserved for general avia-tion, to turboprop commercial flights.

• Keeping the present curfew on flights between 11pm – 6am at Kingsford-Smith.