BY KATHY FAIRFAX
SYDNEY — Since the late 1940s, successive Australian governments have debated the need for a second Sydney airport. As many as 20 possible sites have been suggested and more than half of those have been closely examined.
In December, the federal government announced that the development of a second international airport at Badgerys Creek would be deferred for a further 10 years and that assistance would be given to a private buyer willing to purchase and extend Bankstown Airport. The cost of such an extension has been put at between $300-400 million.
Bankstown, currently devoted to light aircraft and flight training, would become a regional airport capable of handling "overflow" passenger jet traffic from Sydney's Kingsford Smith Airport. Jets as large as Boeing 737s would be permitted to land at Bankstown.
Howard candidly admitted, "I'm not one of those who frankly think you'll ever build an airport at Badgerys Creek". The prime minister did not base that comment on aviation traffic forecasts or infrastructure needs, rather the most pressing thing on his mind was the government's survival at the next federal election.
In 1996, Howard entered the election with a policy of "redistributing" Sydney's airport noise by building at Badgerys Creek. Then, the Liberals won several seats in western Sydney — Lindsay, Macarthur, Macquarie and Parramatta — and retained them in the 1998 election. Howard was not about to alienate the "battlers" whose support had previously been so elusive for the Liberals by building an big noisy airport in their midst.
So, without detailed safety planning or evidence of commercial feasibility or environmental sustainability, Canberra pinned the future of Sydney's aviation needs on Bankstown Airport.
Bankstown airport, in Sydney's densely populated inner south-west, is Labor Party heartland. Howard has shown his contempt for local sentiment by excluding concerned local community groups from the environmental impact statement process and from Sydney Airport Community Forum briefings on the Bankstown proposals.
The Bankstown decision will please the large airline companies, which did not want Sydney's international airport located too far from the city. A decision also paves the way for the sale of Kingsford Smith Airport, creating a windfall to be used for electoral pork-barrelling.
National Party leader John Anderson's declaration to a group of Mudgee businesspeople that forcing the regional airlines out of Sydney Airport would happen "over my dead body" was a token attempt to placate increasingly hostile rural voters.
In making the Bankstown airport decision now, Howard has transferred some of the Badgerys problem to the Labor Party. Labor has been very careful to avoid making promises that it will stop the expansion of Bankstown if it wins government.
The Western Sydney Alliance, an anti-Badgerys Creek lobby group, has also called on Labor "to abandon any support for an airport at Badgerys Creek".
Labor's platform on the subject is vague. The ALP says it would "build a second airport in the Sydney basin, introduce fairer flight paths and maintain the cap and curfew at Sydney Airport".
In December, Labor's transport spokesperson Martin Ferguson told the Sydney Morning Herald: "Neither party has ruled out Badgerys Creek. But no party is going to an election with a promise to build Badgerys Creek. That's where it's at."
Clearly, as Allan Ezzy, chairperson of the Western Sydney Alliance, noted, "The need for a major second airport has not been established on the basis of an objective analysis of underlying strategic factors, but rather on the basis of perceived political need".
At the same time as the government was considering a total outlay of $9 billion for a new airport and its infrastructure, a much more modestly priced high-speed rail link between Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne was also considered and rejected.
Yet high-speed rail has the potential to provide an alternative to air travel and forms the basis for considering airport options outside the Sydney basin.
No federal government has yet taken an integrated approach to Australia's transport needs. Federal and state governments spend millions of dollars annually upgrading and repairing roads for the benefit of road transport corporations while much more cost-effective rail transport systems are allowed to fall into ruin.
In Europe, high-speed rail has delivered excellent service for more than 20 years. The US and China, two of the world's largest economies with similar inter-city distances to Australia, have both embraced the magnetic levitation high-speed rail technology.
It is likely that high-speed rail could provide a viable alternative to air travel on the longer and more strategically significant routes between Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Yet there is little evidence that the technology has been evaluated.
The only environmentally acceptable long-term plan for Sydney's airport needs is to gradually scale down and eventually close Kingsford Smith Airport, and replace it with a larger-capacity international airport outside the Sydney basin and away from populated areas. New airports around the world are now increasingly being sited outside city areas.
Sydney is fortunate to have such an option in Goulburn, halfway between Sydney and Canberra, where the airport would be welcomed. A high-speed rail service linking the new airport with Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Brisbane would make the option both viable and environmentally justifiable.
Goulburn would gain jobs and infrastructure and millions of Sydney residents would be free of daily noise, aviation fuel pollution and fear of the carnage that would be caused if an aircraft crashed in one of Australia's most densely populated areas.