Badgerys Creek prepares for takeoff

Federal Urban Infrastructure Minister Paul Fletcher. Picture: Richard Dobson

The defining and perpetual legacy of Tony Abbott’s brief prime ministership may well end up becoming Sydney’s $5 billion second airport at Badgerys Creek.

It is also a project that for Malcolm Turnbull, if he can get the politics right, could be a solution to winning back western Sydney, which abandoned the Coalition last year.

With the government almost certain to take over responsibility for building it with the likelihood that Sydney Airport Corporation pass up the rights to, there will be shovels in the ground by the end of the year and millions of tonnes of dirt moved by the time of the next election.

The $3.6bn in local road projects will be under way and plans for a commuter rail link from the CBD to Badgerys Creek will presumably be finalised and ready to announce. And Sydney Airport will finally be stripped of its monopoly on air travel into and out of the nation’s largest city.

Labor, which given half the chance would try to turn this 1700ha site into a giant urban wind farm, has no choice but to support it and the country will have locked in one of the most ­important pieces of economic ­infrastructure built for some time.

Abbott and his treasurer Joe Hockey deserve the credit for getting this project moving after ­almost half a century of dawdling, adjournment and political obstruction by successive government from both sides.

Abbott had to be pushed and shoved and ultimately convinced but in the end he got there.

Had it not been for Urban ­Infrastructure Minister Paul Fletcher, this critical project could easily have been mothballed or delayed again by a timid Coalition, perhaps even long enough for a populist Labor government to shelve it again.

The scare campaign against the airport has been concerted. The critics have been many and they have been vocal, including some government MPs.

It certainly didn’t help the government at the last election, which saw Turnbull lose the Blue Mountains seat of Macquarie and the western Sydney seat of Macarthur, both affected by the airport. The seat of Lindsay had other ­issues, including Turnbull himself, but has historically been the epicentre of opposition to the airport.

It’s likely all three key seats would have been lost anyway but the benefits of the project in terms of raw jobs and better transport for more than one million people were simply not sold. The government ran dead on the issue.

The assured and competent handling of the airport project might well be the issue that determines those seats, and, potentially therefore, our next government.

When Fletcher took over this project last July, a single minister was finally tasked with delivering what Abbott and Hockey had ­secured but were denied from progressing after losing high office.

Since the last election, Fletcher has been quietly working away to make sure it happens. He has done it without fanfare and with a ­proficiency that many of his ­colleagues could use.

The mountain of regulatory work that had to be churned through was considerable. Fletcher’s private sector experience — he was promoted to Optus director of corporate and regulatory ­affairs at age 34 — has clearly been a factor.

Key milestones have been achieved with little blowback for the government. In September the environmental impact statement for the airport was signed despite 5000 public submissions and a history of EIS’s being the death knell for the airport over the past 30 years. The noise impacts were addressed by the banning of a single merge point for aircraft over residential areas, meaning no residents would be affected by flights ­approaching the new airport.

By December, the airport plan was finalised, providing authority for the construction and operation of a Stage 1 — a single runway and facilities capable of handling 10 million passengers. That same month, following two years of negotiating with Sydney Airport Corporation, which had first right of refusal to build the airport, a notice of intention was issued with a deadline of May 8.

Fletcher also won the argument that no government subsidy would be provided to the private sector to build it.

A joint scoping study on western Sydney’s rail needs is under way, and will eventually provide a rapid transit service for a million people in western Sydney into the city and other commercial hubs.

Recent decisions by the Federal Court in the federal government’s favour mean that almost all tenancies have now been concluded successfully and the site will be ready for the developer. This potentially difficult area has stayed largely out the news due to assured management of the issue.

And last week, a 22-member Forum on Western Sydney Airport — headed by former director general of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Peter Shergold, who is now Western Sydney University chancellor — was finalised as a critical community consultation mechanism for the next 10 years before operations begin in 2026.

Two neutral Labor MPs were also appointed to the forum to avoid accusation of bias.

Fletcher’s approach suggests a minister who, as rare as it may ­appear these days, understands that if you bugger the politics, you bugger the policy, a problem that is not unfamiliar for the Turnbull government.