ADF battles fast-track airport

THE Toowoomba businessman behind a controversial new regional airport claims it will be open within months.

Wellcamp Airport

THE Toowoomba businessman behind a controversial new regional airport claims it will be open within months, despite strong objections from defence chiefs who say that it will compromise operations at two nearby military bases.

Construction has been fast-tracked at Wellcamp on the fringes of the Darling Downs, the site of the first major airport in Australia to be built on a greenfield site since Melbourne's Tullamarine opened 43 years ago.

The airport was approved with minimal assessment of its environmental and social impact and without formal consultation under a local government planning loophole that has since expired.

Toowoomba businessman John Wagner, chairman of the airport's owners, Wagners, said yesterday there would be scheduled passenger services from the new airport from September next year. For that to happen, however, the Department of Defence would have to surrender 40 per cent of its restricted military airspace around the army's Oakey's Aviation Centre, a major training base for helicopter pilots.

A Civil Aviation Safety Authority airspace sharing proposal for the Toowoomba area will not be completed until February or March next year.

Tony Abbott told broadcaster Alan Jones in May: "We would not do anything that would impede the operations of the Oakey air base."

Defence warned Toowoomba Regional Council last December that the location gave rise to "serious safety implications".

The head of Defence Estate Planning, Air Commodore Anker Brodersen, advised that "due to Defence's operational requirements, access to active restricted military airspace can only be granted on a case-by-case basis".

Despite Defence objections, Toowoomba Regional Council signed off on the proposal in December after an eight-minute public discussion, a mere 167 days after receiving a three-page application from the developers.

In November last year, the federal Department of Infrastructure warned the council there were "significant possible constraints" to the operation of the proposed airport that "could adversely impact on Defence operations at Oakey and Amberley".

"We understand there are likely to be unacceptable conflicts when Oakey's controlled and military restricted airspace is active which would seriously impact on the operations of the proposed new airport," the department's aviation environment general manager Scott Stone wrote. Mr Stone said the department "strongly encourages the council to consider the expert advice of Defence and CASA before any further consideration is given to approval of the Wellcamp project".

The department also raised concerns about the lack of environmental and social assessment.

Wellcamp will boast the ninth longest civil runway in the country, capable of landing Boeing 747s and Antonov heavy-lift freighters servicing the mining industry west of the Great Dividing Range. Mr Wagner said yesterday that the airport would be used mainly for domestic passenger services and that negotiations were under way with four airlines.

He insisted yesterday that agreement had been reached with CASA and Defence.

"We'll knock this one over in under two years from start to finish," he told The Australian yesterday. "We're working 24 hours a day, seven days a week."

On Friday, Mr Wagner piloted the first private plane to land on the as yet incomplete runway, with his parents, Henry and Mary Wagner, among the passengers. Yesterday the operators held a public open day at the site, which included the ceremonial blasting of 500,000 tonnes of rock. An application to build the airport was submitted to Toowoomba Regional Council three days before the expiration of a planning loophole that allowed it to be processed with minimal assessment.

Had the application been lodged from July 1 last year under the new Toowoomba Regional Council Planning Scheme, it would have required extensive environmental and community consultation. As it was, however, local residents were given no formal opportunity to object.