Badgerys Creek ‘needs to be more than just an airport’

Sydney’s new Badgerys Creek airport should be ‘more than an unregulated runway in a sheep paddock’, ­advocates say.

Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils president Tony Hadchiti. Picture: Timothy Clapin

Sydney’s proposed Badgerys Creek airport should be “more than an unregulated runway in a sheep paddock”, according to ­advocates of leveraging the project to develop a growth-boosting “aerotropolis”.

As pressure mounts for a bipartisan commitment to keeping the proposed airport in western Sydney curfew-free, an influential group of local councils have declared that a strategic approach was needed to developing the airport precinct and surrounding areas.

“If we are putting our hopes for increased employment in Badgerys Creek, then it must be more than just an airport. It needs to be an aerotropolis,” Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils president Tony Hadchiti said.

“An infrastructure plan for a game-changing airport should include more than just roads.”

He said the project needed to be “more than an unregulated runway in a sheep paddock”.

In a 2015 report, the NSW Business Chamber commissioned a report from a US expert on the “aerotropolis” concept that argued that a new planning strategy would be required for a western Sydney “aerotropolis”. Examples of the concept include the areas around Amsterdam’s Schiphol, Incheon in South Korea and Dallas-Fort Worth in Texas.

The chamber’s western Sydney director, David Borger, said that financing would be needed for infrastructure around the airport precinct.

“They should get cracking on this now,” Mr Borger said.

Others question how much business the new airport will see when it opens.

“It will take time — a long time, before it has real volume,” said one business figure.

The comments come as the major parties come under pressure to commit to allowing the second Sydney airport to operate 24 hours a day and to resist pressure to tighten the cap on aircraft movements at Kingsford-Smith Airport.

Last Friday, the Australian Logistics Council — whose members include Coles, Asciano and Qantas Freight — declared that a curfew-free airport would have “enormous economic benefits”.

Labor has said it would impose a night “no fly zone” if it were to win government.

Mr Hadchiti said that during the election, federal leaders had tried to address flight noise concerns but this, “while important, is just the tip of the Badgerys iceberg”.

He said that “many questions still unanswered” included “how the surrounding employment lands will be activated” and when and where rail links would be constructed. The group could not fully support the proposed airport until such questions were “sufficiently” answered by Canberra.

Major Projects Minister Paul Fletcher said the government’s investment in the airport and related infrastructure “supports the emerging industries in western Sydney that are creating the jobs of the future”.

“Airports have the potential to transform the economy of the surrounding region, bringing a range of jobs in specialist, knowledge-based industries,” Mr Fletcher said.

Labor’s spokesman on infrastructure, Anthony Albanese, said a key issue was transport links to the site. Mr Albanese said the project has “got to be visionary” and spur jobs across a range of areas.