Terry McCrann on Sydney’s second airport
THE seemingly never-ending soap-opera-like saga of Sydney’s second airport is both a depressing comment on the way big infrastructure decisions are — badly — made in Australia, and at the same time a big red flashing light against the seductive suggestion we should embark on an infrastructure-building binge to boost the economy.
Terry McCrann
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THE seemingly never-ending soap-opera-like saga of Sydney’s second airport is both a depressing comment on the way big infrastructure decisions are — badly — made in Australia, and at the same time a big red flashing light against the seductive suggestion we should embark on an infrastructure-building binge to boost the economy.
First off is the time it’s taken to get to this point. It’s been close enough to half a century, not even from start to finish but from start to start.
I — again depressingly — like to quote the comparative example of Hong Kong’s second airport. In both cases, the idea was first seriously floated in the 1970s and we both got to detailed planning in the early to mid 1980s.
We supposedly “made” a decision on a second airport for Sydney in 1986. HK only committed to their airport in 1989. But just nine years later, in 1998, HK actually had planes landing and taking off.
Needless to say we’ll only get to that point some 30 years after HK. And, you still have to add even after yesterday’s supposed commitment — perhaps.
We’re also talking about two very different projects. HK had to flatten an island and build major road and rail infrastructure across water and into one of the most built-up CBDs in the world.
They did it all in nine years; and now have an airport that processes nearly 70 million passengers a year.
In contrast, we’ve got to flatten a paddock at Badgerys Creek and build a few new roads. It’s going to take about the same time — again, perhaps — and we’ll end up with a facility that can do 10 million passengers a year. And get it, to stress, nearly 30 years after HK got theirs.
Did I say “perhaps”? A better word would be pathetic — absolutely, disgracefully and embarrassingly pathetic.
But it gets worse. We have embarked on building an airport that we don’t actually need. The airport we should be “building” is the one that Sydney’s already got. If we used it properly, it would accommodate all traffic growth for the next 20 years or more.
Sydney has three runways, HK has two. Sydney does fewer than 40 million passengers a year, HK does 70 million. Ah, but the noise — got to close it completely for 7 hours a day, every day.
But look at much tinier totally built-up Singapore. Noise? Schmoise. It only has two runways. It does 55 million passengers a year and has plenty of capacity.
In the way the Sydney Airport project was firmed up, it seemed to be more about justifying the building of roads in western Sydney than a fair-dinkum major airport.
That’s the critical next point: the whole thing’s totally half-arsed. If you are going to build the damn thing, do it HK-style — to completely replace the existing airport.
Make it totally state-of-art, able to operate 24/7, have ground-up transport links into the CBD, including a Heathrow-like fast-rail.
And oh, by the by, integrate the domestic and international terminals like any 20th century, far less 21st century, airport does.
Like for instance, Tullamarine, down Melbourne way.
Furthermore, you could fund the new airport build by selling off the land at Mascot as absolutely prime development real estate.
Oh wait, the problem is the Federal Government’s already done that.
With all the comings and goings, the total commitment on both sides of politics in Canberra to wholehearted unqualified indecision, the Howard government slipped in the airport’s privatisation. If might have been a “good idea at the time”, but apart from selling one of the taxpayers’ most valuable assets at a bargain-basement price of $5.5 billion — actually, it was via a 99-year lease — the transactions created a mass of “rights” which have crippled the second airport decision-making.
In particular, the Sydney Airport company has a right of first refusal to develop and operate the airport. After yesterday it now has four to nine months to decide.
WHILE it might make obvious sense for the two to be integrated, that will be driven by the best interests of the shareholders of one company not what is necessarily best for city, state and the country overall, and in particular passengers and taxpayers.
We have of course “been there” all too depressingly many times before.
The most disturbingly depressing was the “good idea at the time” National Broadband Network.
Then prime minister Kevin Rudd committed to spending — ha-ha, bloody great HA-HA — $40 billion to build his all-fibre NBN. Truth be told, there was never going to be much change out of $100 billion if we had been silly enough to try to do it all that way.
Hot tip: we — as in they, a continuing Gillard Labor government — would have been. The best thing Malcolm Turnbull has done in his third — or is it fourth or fifth? — career has been to cut it back to a just-as-good mixed technology network; halving the cost and getting it built at least 10 years sooner.
But then, he did that before he became prime minister.
Malcolm, communications minister, please come back, all is forgiven. The nation needs you. As communications minister.
It would be a very bad idea to embark on a “dozen, say, second Sydney airports”. Just because interest rates are low, we desperately need more infrastructure, and building it would create jobs.
As the sorry Sydney second airport saga shows, we need the right infrastructure. We need to then get it right. And we need to build it right.
Otherwise we will end up wasting billions — tens of billions even — just as surely as we did with the NBN and have repeated on so many other occasions, with Sydney’s big “western roads project” just the latest.
WEATHER-DILL WEATHER-ILL IT’S THE SAME
A FUNNY thing happened on the road from South Australia’s statewide power blackout on September 28 through to October 19: the “root cause” of the blackout evaporated, making either a liar or an idiot and most probably both of the aptly named SA premier Jay Weather-dill.
On September 29, AEMO (the Australian Energy Market Operator) was in no doubt: “Initial investigations have identified the root cause of the event is likely to be the multiple loss of 275 kilovolt (kV) power lines during severe storm activity in the state.”
It seemed so obvious — and certainly was, to those like premier Weather-dill, desperately trying to defend their precious, useless, wind turbines. Remember those oh-so convenient photos of fallen towers?
By October 5 AEMO was little specific: “The weather resulted in multiple transmission system faults. In the short time between 16:16 and 16:18, system faults included (my emphasis) the loss of three major 275 kV transmission lines north of Adelaide.”
By October 19, those “fallen towers” had disappeared altogether. As AEMO explained, it was all due to the wind farms powering or shutting down before two towers fell.
In contrast, old-fashioned — as in, they’ve got an old-fashioned way of working — “thermal generators” remained connected up until SA “disconnected” from the Victorian interconnector, and an Australian state went the full Kiwi.
To stress, it all happened — as that update didn’t spell it out — before the pylons went down.
It was all and only about SA’s mad dash to wind turbines. You can play with the operating protocols but the fact remains when the wind don’t blow …. and when it does blow, too hard, as well…….
I am gratified to Warwick Hughes, who produces an estimable blog on
“climate change”, for drawing this to my attention.
What’s that you say? I got the SA premier’s name wrong? No matter, so it’s actually Weather-ill. Same thing, he’s still a complete dill on the subject of weather.
Originally published as Terry McCrann on Sydney’s second airport
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