Badgerys Creek: Airport the key to Sydney’s future economic growth
PRIME Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the airport at Badgerys Creek would play a key role in Western Sydney’s future.
NSW
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PRIME Minister Malcolm Turnbull said the airport at Badgerys Creek would play a key role in Western Sydney’s future.
“This is really critical to the economic future of Western Sydney,” he said in Sydney.
“This is where Sydney’s growth is going to be ... This will be an enormous economic catalyst. This is what we need to have — more jobs, more investment, more industry, more technology.”
Urban Infrastructure Minister Paul Fletcher said the plan involved a number of key principles to govern flight paths, including one that would allow “no single-point merge over any residential community”.
“Secondly, we have said that during evening hours, aircraft must both takeoff to and land from the southwest, the relatively unpopulated areas of the southwest where safe to do so — which indications are will be more than 80 per cent of the time,” he said.
“So that’s very important.”
But Mr Fletcher pointed to work being undertaken to get Brisbane’s second runway moving and hinted that determining flight paths could take “several years”.
“There needs to be very detailed consultation with airlines, with the community, on the possible flight paths and on the impacts of them,” he said.
Mr Turnbull said there was still “a lot of work to be done” in deciding routes for train connections, saying there needed to be consultation with landholders, the state government and other stakeholders.
“We are looking at the options for rail very, very carefully,” he said.
“But with the aim of ensuring that the rail connectivity for the airport will ideally be commenced when the airport opens and if not as soon thereafter as possible.”
Mr Fletcher said the government expected to issue Sydney Airport Corporation with a notice of intention by the end of the year.
“The position is this — Sydney Airport Corporation Limited has the first right of refusal,” he said.
“That is their contractual right and the government is scrupulous about honouring that right. We’ve been working very closely with them for two years.”
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