Badgerys Or Bust?

Is the longest running controversy in Australian aviation, the epic “on again, off again” saga of a second Sydney airport nearing an end? All the signs suggest the new federal government will jump start the Badgerys Creek project in its first term. But the real question is: How will the country’s primary airport hub at Mascot manage traffic growth until it is ready?

When it comes to where a second Sydney airport should be, Dr Warren Mundy, who served on the federal government’s steering committee for the Joint Study on Aviation Capacity in the Sydney Region, thinks it’s a no brainer. Of the dozens of sites considered over more than three decades, Badgerys Creek wins hands down.

“Why Badgerys Creek? Well, if you’re going to build an international airport of the sort that people think we need to build you roughly need 2,000 hectares of relatively flat land,” he says. “Then you need to think about where it isand how you will align the runways and that will knock out a few more of these sites. Then you take off national parks and areas which are subject to significant environmental overlay and then, as we discovered with Wilton, you’d better get rid of all those sites that are subject to mine subsidence. Then you can get rid of a few others like Holsworthy, because you don’t quite know where the unexploded ordnance is. ” Speaking during a panel discussion – Towards Sydney’s Next Generation Airport – organised by the Royal Aerospace Society at Sydney University, Mundy said the simple reality is that Badgerys is the best place because of its physical characteristics and proximity to people. “The profitability of a second airport site is highly problematic. People are going to invest billions of dollars and they are going to take a long, long time to recover that money. It’s going to be a long hard slog for them. And the further you put it away from people the more costly it’s going to be for them to use and therefore the less likely they are to use it. It’s the closest site we can find to the CBD of Sydney. At the end of the day Badgerys does the job. ”RAeS panel session was prompted by revelations that Badgerys is finally poised for in-principle go-ahead after Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Treasurer Joe Hockey officially killed off the option of using the RAAF Richmond base as a stopgap to ease congestion at Mascot, paving the way for a second airport decision after 30 years of indecision.