Project Sydney: Kingsford Smith Airport revamp the one key to a high-flying Sydney

OPINION: KINGSFORD Smith Airport is arguably the most important piece of infrastructure in Sydney, and our city’s future will be defined by what we do with it, writes Christopher Brown.

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LUCY Turnbull will deliver the third Bradfield Oration to a powerful Sydney audience on Wednesday night — the culmination of The Daily Telegraph’s Project Sydney campaign to push the Emerald City toward greatness and honour the legendary engineer, public servant and advocate Dr JJ Bradfield.

Lucy has inherited the Bradfield legacy with her Greater Sydney Commission plotting its own grand “imagineering” project. At last year’s oration, Premier Mike Baird announced that Rozelle Bay would become “silicon harbour”, with Google to anchor a hi-tech employment hub at White Bay power station, leading Sydney’s digital transformation. In 2014, then-prime minister Tony Abbott used this same event to boast that Badgerys Creek would be fast tracked and that he wanted it named Bradfield Airport.

Sadly, procurement progress on both of these projects has been limited, however we hope for breakthroughs in the near future.

Former Prime minister Tony Abbott has also addressed the Bradfield audience. Picture: Justin Lloyd

Lucy Turnbull is set to deliver the Bradfield Oration. Picture: Kym Smith

The infrastructure plans that dominated the first two Bradfield Orations are emblematic of a city that seeks new markets, global engagement and urban transformation.

This is what Bradfield wanted for us a century ago with his dream of a grand bridge to span Sydney Harbour and an underground rail network to drive connectivity. He planned for population growth well over the horizon, he leapt every political hurdle, he delivered projects on time and under budget and he boosted civic confidence amid the Great Depression.

So what are the next generation of Bradfield projects? Considering our geographic challenges, the obvious candidates for the combined use of public and private investment to stimulate Sydney are transport-related.

We must develop a new fast metro line from Sydney to Parramatta; build a new north-south rail link from Rouse Hill to Campbelltown via Badgerys Creek, connecting Western Sydney with Western Sydney Airport, and finally deliver a new terminal on the eastern side of Garden Island to manage exploding growth in the lucrative cruise shipping market.

Planes leave the runway at Kingsford Smith Airport.

However, Kingsford Smith Airport is the single most important piece of infrastructure in the nation. A recent Deloitte study showed that by 2034, KSA would almost double its economic contribution to $55 billion annually and grow its employment numbers beyond 500,000.

There is no other airport, port, road or rail line that gets close to this.

Delays in finalising Badgerys Creek development mean that KSA will continue to be our only portal to the world for at least another decade and government forecasts show that Badgerys Creek will not compete with KSA for passengers until the mid-2040s. It is already the busiest airport in Australia and demand will escalate.

We are going to have to rethink regulatory controls at Sydney Airport and the land transport links that get us there. I sat on the federal/state inquiry that selected Badgerys Creek as the new airport site in 2010, but the first nine recommendations of this review of Sydney’s aviation needs were about freeing up Kingsford Smith to drive the local economy, regardless of a new airport. It’s time we revisited that plan.

Let’s build the new transport projects to unshackle Sydney and also fix the old ones that still drive our economy and make us truly great.

Christopher Brown is executive chair of Taylor Street Advisory and a governor of the Bradfield Partnership