Michael Hatton (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Gorton is exactly right. It has been hard, but we have to endure these things. In that 11 years, we have discovered that the operation of the Airports Act has a number of fundamental failings and flaws. Whenever you put something new into place—whenever you hazard that the Commonwealth should do things that they have not done before—you have to expect that it will need tweaking, twisting and changing. But the tweaking, twisting and changing that is involved here ain’t enough. I can say that because of the experience that I have had with the development master plans that have been put forward for Bankstown Airport, which is the busiest general aviation airport in Australia. I will come to that shortly; I just want to deal with the general context here.

There are now 22 privatised airports around Australia. What drove the incorporation of the Airports Act in 1996 was a recognition by the Labor government that they had to do something better than what they had done before when the Federal Airports Corporation ran those government owned airports. They would have to do something better in terms of getting more money in to develop the airports and improve the existing aviation infrastructure and passenger services than what would come out of the normal budget process. So they had a bit of a debate. Part of the debate was whether they would flog off those airports in toto, in perpetuity. Luckily, the decision was made that that was not a good use of Commonwealth resources and that instead there should be a lease of those airports and that the lease should be subject to a specific range of lease provisions and that that would be incorporated into the Airports Act. There was to be protection for the public at large, for the people who lived around the airports and for local councils and state governments that would be impacted by the infrastructure changes at the airports. There had to be a master plan in process, and the master plan was to cover 20 years.

I think Rip Van Winkle went to sleep for 20 years and then woke up. The master plan basically says: ‘Start here. Okay, Rip, go off to sleep now. Twenty years down the track you will wake up and this is the what the world will look like.’ But that master plan is subject to the community having a look at it. There is a 90-day community consultation period. The people who have bought the lease actually run the whole of that consultation process. They take in comments from the community, from councils, from state governments, from individuals in the community, from interest groups. They take those comments in, finalise their master plan and put it to the minister. The minister has the power to either tick or cross, to say yes or no. He can accept or reject.

We know that Minister Anderson rejected Coolangatta airport’s plans for the extension of their runway at least twice if not three times. The fact that the seat of Richmond was held by Larry Anthony and they did not want the extension of that runway to impact on that seat might have had some direct bearing on that. But we know you can just knock it back, and that is what he as the minister did. We also know that, in the interstices between the plan being put up to the minister and when we get a final result, there can be discussion—and in fact there is—between the minister’s office and those people who are the proponents. But no-one outside the minister’s office and the people who have bought the lease know what is involved in those discussions. They cannot have any more say in relation to it. The only say they have been allowed to have is an input to the people who actually own the lease and have a vested interest in getting their master plan up.

Whatever the point and purpose of the 1996 act was, I think there are still fundamental problems, because I have seen it in the operation. I was told at the time: ‘Don’t worry, because we go through the public planning process. You will be able to have your say. People in the community will be able to have their say,’ and we did—very forcefully. The one thing that I ensured got up was that it should be written in blood into this master plan that large jet aircraft would not be flying into Bankstown Airport. Why was that important? I was told by the owners: ‘Don’t worry about that, Michael. What are you worried about? We have got no real intention of doing that. We would actually have to get rid of the current runways and extend the runway.’ They did want to extend the runway by 200 metres. I said that it was not good, that it would have an impact on the people in Condell Park. We would have to widen it from 30 metres to 40 metres and we would have to strengthen it. They said: ‘Don’t worry, because we are going to build buildings right around the runway. Gee, we would have to knock those buildings down to go ahead with it.’ You could put 737s straight into and out of Bankstown if you did that.

Guess what? On 13 December 2000 the federal government wanted to do just that. They came up with this genius of a plan where they decided that Bankstown Airport would be an overflow airport for Kingsford Smith, because they did not want to build another one at Badgerys Creek or anywhere else. So it was an overflow airport. I told them at the time that they were just completely insane. You cannot run Bankstown and Kingsford Smith coevally given the distance between them and the fact that the paths of the aircraft run across each other. It took this government at least five months—it may have been longer—to come to realise what I had told them on the very first day that they announced it. They were stark raving mad—it couldn’t be done.

In the end there was a release from Minister Tuckey, who was helping out Minister Anderson. They said, ‘Oh, we’re not going to do it anymore.’ Well, that was not good enough: ‘We are not going to do it any more, we don’t intend to do it.’ I wanted it written in blood in the master plan that the category Cs would be the absolute limit, that we would not be having 747s—they would be too big. You could have 737s, 737Bs; you could have a whole range of aircraft flying into Bankstown. I was also against regular passenger transport going into Bankstown, but this government allowed 12 flights a day—that is just the start, the first kick in the door, nothing has happened yet. That is despite the fact that there was an attempt to set up yet another airline that was going to run in the back blocks from Melbourne through to Sydney and then to Brisbane by a guy who was running around with racing cars and so on—an ill-considered move but one that in the future more could happen with.

There is a specific provision within this bill which is of concern not necessarily to the Labor Party but to me, because under that provision there is a possibility that Bankstown could be declared a non-core airport, and the limit of five per cent in terms of airline ownership could be lifted. That could happen by regulation as a result of the changes to these acts. I am totally, utterly and completely against such a change, and the shadow minister in his contribution has indicated that we will act in order to stop that should they do it. You have to regulate, and regulate hard, in this area.

I discovered through this process that to have the act written in that way, allowing a lessee in the master plan a period of 90 days to take everybody’s comments in, but to then take no notice whatsoever of those comments at all—not even to have to reply to the comments or justify the stance they are taking—is an abrogation of the Commonwealth’s responsibility. It is the case today that, after these amendments go through, that situation will still pertain. More work will have to be done by an incoming Labor government to really amend this legislation to make it more robust.

The prospect of getting a large block of land in the middle of Sydney, the geographical heart of Sydney, by the people who bought Bankstown Airport and Camden Airport and Hoxton airport as a job lot—they got a phenomenal deal—is a great commercial enterprise. Had Bankstown council had its head screwed on, it would have bought it. The cost of buying those three entities will be paid for when Hoxton Park is sold. It is right next to the M7. It will be sold for residential and industrial development. The very cost of buying all three will be amortised completely through the sale of Hoxton Park, and it is in the legislation that five years after the master plan is approved, bang, that happens. So you pay your money and you get it all back. Terrific.

What else to do you do with this? What do you do with the flights? They have to go back to Bankstown, some more go to Camden, or they go out to Wedderburn—the smaller ones. When you look at the practical experience of it, Bankstown Airport is really an industrial-commercial-retail zone with an attached airstrip. That is it; that is what we have got. It is an attached airstrip. What does not drive the new airport owners centrally is the need to run general aviation in Sydney. We do not have enough general aviation airports in Sydney.

When the RAAF finally leaves Richmond we may have an opportunity to really expand general aviation provisions in Sydney. If this government wanted to start at Badgerys Creek or elsewhere to build up general aviation—given that Schofields, one of our major training facilities at Bankstown, was knocked off; it still does the core of the training work done in Australia—we could expand and make a great deal more if the central focus was on airports and running airports.

I do not blame the lessees for saying: ‘This is a magnificent commercial prospect. We can put retail, commercial, industrial and light industrial into this and make a motza.’ They have been given that opportunity; that is what the lease allows them to do. But what is only partially addressed here by this bill is the impact of that on the local council area and on the state government responsibilities. And the impact is significant.

When the act was thought up and put into operation over the past 10-plus years, I do not think anyone in the minister’s office really envisaged—and they should have—just what impact there would be. They said: ‘Good idea. We’re going to flog off 22 airports. We’ll get the biggest amount of money we can. We’ll then let them just have a go in terms of what they want to develop on that land.’ There is no provision whatsoever for local councils to control land development on the airport. I do not necessarily think there should be.

However, there should be conformity in planning and planning powers, not only with local council provisions but also with state government provisions, which really control what the local councils can do. But I have a situation with the development of this master plan at Bankstown Airport, where the local council, through their mayors—the current one and the previous one—have run campaigns on the basis that Bankstown council should have complete control of what happens in planning at Bankstown Airport. They can do it because they know they will never get it. But we do not have a strong enough underlining of the fact that the federal government owns this land and is responsible for it.

Do we have town planners in the minister for transport’s office? I think the answer is no. Should we have them? The answer is yes. We should have town planners who everyone dealing with this situation will know can give direct advice to the minister’s office. So when a lessee rolls up with his 20-year development master plan that has to be a reviewed every five years, people who are competent in the area can say: ‘Minister, there’s a problem here. If you look at the impact of this massive development at Bankstown Airport, there will be a great deal more truck activity, a great deal more commercial activity. The sensible way to do things is to provide an internal road.’

But guess what? Greater activity has to come out in one way or the other. So it comes onto either Henry Lawson Drive or Milperra Road. There is much greater ingress and egress, and much greater transport impact. Who is going to pay the cost of that? At the moment no-one is. The lessees do not want to cough up and say, ‘We’ll fix these’—in this case, two state roads. They will say: ‘We won’t pay a couple of hundred million dollars in order to make sure those lanes are expanded and we can get our traffic out. That’s somebody else’s problem.’ This bill does not fix it. It should, because, 10 years on, this is the opportunity to tweak and change and make it more robust as a result of experience. Airports are not just about getting planes in and out of the air, they are not just about the infrastructure that is directly aviation related; the non-aviation purposes of airports also have a fundamental impact.

The biggest impact with regard to this is on the local community. State governments are not going to rush to put in tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars to provide the infrastructure. Somebody has got to pay; this has to be worked out. The master planning process should be a conjoint one, with the Commonwealth in control of it and fully driving it. It should not be controlled by the lessee, and that is exactly what we have got now. The lessee must conform to what the state and local provisions are, and the Commonwealth has to write it. Why? Because we did not sell these airports; we are leasing them. We are still liable, fundamentally. If you receive the money, you take the responsibility.

This bill does a few bits and pieces to make changes. I will tell you what, Mr Deputy Speaker: it does not fix the master planning problem for any one of those 22 airports Australia-wide. You can have your say, you can have a yak, for 90 days or so, but the lessee does not have to take a single bit of notice of any of it. They could do a side deal with the minister’s office and say: ‘We’ll flick.’ What happened in our case? The 737s were banned. The class C and up were banned. They said: ‘Trust us. Cross our hearts and hope to die, we won’t really do it.’ Well, I do not, and that is why I ensured that that got up, but I could not stop the extension of the runway and I could not stop the regular passenger services, because the minister decided that was okay.

That is a coalition minister who on 13 December 2000 wanted to turn us into Sydney’s second airport. Can you trust the minister in those circumstances? I have to tell you: no. Could you do so in the future? No. Do we need to have major, significant change here so that the community can have a say and that say can be represented in what the outcomes are? Otherwise we have just got to cop it. We have to cop massive development that is unconstrained because whatever the person who has bought it wants to do, they do it. One tick and you are away: 20 years later—the Rip Van Winkle effect—what have we got here? What do we do with this? Who is going to pay for all that increase? What about all that extra impact on those local roads?

I do not want 20 years or more of local campaigns with state councils or groups coming and saying, ‘We want to run this and we want to fix it.’ I want a Commonwealth government which, when it takes the money, takes the responsibility. I want a Commonwealth minister for transport who says: ‘We will regulate. We will legislate these industrial-commercial-retail zones with attached airstrips’—because that is what they have turned into. Even though it is an airports act, fundamentally there is massive development in the heart of Sydney. And it is great—good for jobs, a good impact in terms of the amount of money rolling through the community. It is not great if you are a local council and you are not getting enough return or you do not see that it is adequate. That is why the shadow minister in his argument has said, quite rightly, you need to compensate the locals properly. There should be a proper rate of return. That is why the councils argue for these sorts of things. What do they get back? Zero—maybe a meeting with the previous minister. But the fundamental reality is that nothing really changes in this area, because the quantum of complaints is not properly dealt with.

I welcome the fact that we have got some change after 10 years, but in terms of the practicalities of the way in which this operates we need an overhaul of this system that takes into account the fact that if you are going to flog something you do not give control of the process to the lessee in perpetuity—for the 20 years of the lease plus. What are they on? A 99-year lease, aren’t they? So you just say to the lessee: ‘After 20 years we’ll have a bit of a look at what you’re up to. You can put it in your new master plan. We’ll have 90 days with a “stop the clock” provision and then that’s okay.’ (Time expired)

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