The new

airport

First promised in 1946 and then again in 1986, by 2026 Sydney residents should finally be able to fly into and out of a major airport at Badgerys Creek. At first glance, the rolling hills look as they have for decades. Houses, chicken sheds, eucalypts and other Australian natives dot the landscape. And despite the rush of announcements by politicians, some around Badgerys Creek remain sceptical about whether the airport that has been talked about in Sydney since the 1940s will ever become a reality. Yet, slowly, the area near the foothills of the Blue Mountains is beginning to change. One of the tangible pointers to what lies ahead for 1700 hectares of Commonwealth-owned land at Badgerys Creek is a sign on Elizabeth Drive declaring the “Western Sydney Airport Site”. Around that sign, greenhouses lie disused. The local primary school is in disrepair awaiting demolition. Graves in cemeteries will soon be relocated. Construction has begun on roads in adjacent suburbs. A smattering of locals might be sceptical. But this time they might be wrong. The nation’s political class had decided that in less than a decade, a Badgerys Creek airport will be operational. And the airport is expected to be more than simply a place for planes to take off and land. It is expected to be a catalyst for the economic transformation of the region.

The last to go More than a year after being handed a deadline to leave, about 20 leaseholders on the land designated for the airport are refusing to move. One of them is Hong Lacmai, who fled Vietnam on a boat with her husband and eldest son in 1975. Now aged “over 60”, she will soon be forced to leave her greenhouses at Badgerys Creek where for the past 32 years she has grown herbs and vegetables for markets at Cabramatta. “The government just tells me I have to move. One lady from Canberra came down and say, ‘You have to move’,” Lacmai recalls. “I say, ‘How can I move in six months?’ It was not enough time for me.” While the outcome of legal action is pending, her fate and that of the other leaseholders is virtually sealed. Lacmai is the last market gardener on land that will soon be turned upside down by a massive earthmoving project and covered in tens of thousands of tonnes of concrete.


And unlike other leaseholders who refuse to leave, she is surprisingly pragmatic about the planned airport. “I am happy that they make the airport – it is good for Australia,” she says. It is a sentiment echoed by other locals, especially those eyeing multimillion-dollar windfalls from selling their properties near the airport to developers. Cucumber grower Chati Hatem, for instance, feels he has won the lottery. His family bought two hectares near the airport’s boundary for $210,000 almost three decades ago. Now, Hatem reckons the property could fetch up to $4 million. Every few weeks a real estate agent or investor knocks on his door. “The longer we hold on, the more money we get,” he says. “Nobody is selling around here unless they are struggling. Ninety-nine per cent of people around here see the airport as an opportunity,” he says. “Whoever tells you they are angry about it, I reckon they are full of shit.”

How to design an airport Decades in the making, the new airport will radically reshape Badgerys Creek and the rest of western Sydney – for good or bad. Planned well, it will create thousands of local jobs – both directly and indirectly – and offer millions of people a closer and cheaper alternative to Sydney Airport. Built badly, Western Sydney Airport risks becoming Australia’s version of Mirabel International in Canada. Opened in 1975, Mirabel was designed to replace Montreal’s Dorval Airport. But located more than 50 kilometres from the centre of Montreal, it fell out of favour with travellers who preferred to catch domestic flights from the established airport. Today, Mirabel is a white elephant, serving only cargo flights. Last year its passenger terminal faced a wrecking ball. Rod Eddington, a former chief executive of British Airways and Cathay Pacific, says building an airport at Badgerys Creek is the right option. But he warns against creating too expansive a facility – gold-plating the airport – because growth in traffic will be gradual. “Markets grow incrementally,” Eddington says. “When it opens, it is important to recognise that in the first few years it will have a relatively small number of flights as the market grows and the airlines learn to take advantage of the new airport.”


Under government plans, the new airport will be able to handle about 10 million passengers a year when it opens in 2025, making it a similar size to Gold Coast Airport at Coolangatta. Within a further five years, it is expected to be about the size of Adelaide Airport. In the early years, only about one-fifth of passengers are forecast to be flying from Badgerys Creek on international flights. However, the split between international and domestic passengers is expected to be 43 per cent and 57 per cent respectively by 2050. By then, the government expects a second parallel runway to be built, allowing the airport to handle about 82 million passengers a year. Eddington, a former chairman of Infrastructure Australia, says it is crucial the new airport has a curfew-free status so that it can attract passenger and freighter aircraft. “I understand all of the political complexities around the curfew, but the bottom line is that a key part of the rationale for a second substantial airport relies on it not having one,” he says. “It will be the no-frills carriers and freighters that begin to fly from Badgerys Creek.” The Turnbull government has already moved to allay concerns about aircraft noise, ruling out a “merge point” above Blaxland for planes about to land at Badgerys Creek. But the government also insists the airport should not have a curfew, a policy with which federal Labor has all but agreed.

SOURCE: FINAL ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT FOR WESTERN SYDNEY AIRPORT & SYDNEY AIRPORT MASTER PLAN With curfew A tale of two airports Western Sydney Airport No curfew Sydney Airport SOURCE: FINAL ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STATEMENT FOR WESTERN SYDNEY AIRPORT & SYDNEY AIRPORT MASTER PLAN

When it opens in 2025, the airport’s 3.7-kilometre runway will be long enough for aircraft as large as A380 superjumbos to land. But it will not be easy to entice airlines. They place a high value on flying to Kingsford Smith Airport, located less than nine kilometres from the CBD. And as Kingsford Smith, Sydney’s “gateway airport”, nears maximum capacity over the next two decades, the value for an airline of flying there will increase exponentially. Airlines will resist shifting flights – especially premium services – to Badgerys Creek if it means they give up landing slots at Sydney Airport. Avalon Airport in Victoria is another example of the risks of a second airport gone wrong. Located 55km from Melbourne’s CBD, the airport owned by trucking tycoon Lindsay Fox has struggled to compete against the state capital’s incumbent at Tullamarine. Tigerair pulled its operations out of Avalon in 2011, and Jetstar has also reduced its services in recent years in favour of Tullamarine. Jetstar now has just seven return flights a day to Avalon, five of which are to Sydney. Avalon Airport chief executive Justin Giddings says the top priority needs to be gaining pre-commitments from airlines to fly to the new airport at Badgerys Creek, which might require incentives from the federal or state governments. “Successful two-city airports don’t compete” - Avalon Airport CEO Justin Giddings “Ultimately, they have to get the airlines to fly there,” he says. To achieve that, he is also in favour of the same owner for Sydney’s two main airports because “successful two-city airports don’t compete”. Western Sydney Airport will almost be doomed to fail if it goes head-to-head with Sydney Airport without any rules governing the operation of the two or incentives for airlines to route some of their planes to the secondary airport, Giddings says. “An airport starting from scratch is going to find it very difficult to compete [against the incumbent]. Having some sort of strategy would be beneficial,” he says. But subsidies will be controversial. The Board of Airlines Representatives, which lobbies on behalf of carriers such as Qantas and Emirates, is opposed to the government placing any form of levies on fares to help pay for the new airport, or cross subsiding it through additional charges at Sydney Airport. In a recent position paper, it emphasised the importance of ensuring the new airport did not become a financial drain on the government over the long term. The likelihood that Sydney Airport will take up its first right of refusal to operate Badgerys Creek is regarded as a near certainty. For Sydney Airport, negotiations with the government over the coming months will be about reducing the risks inherent in a greenfield project while maximising the potential returns for its shareholders.

How to get there For the airport to operate smoothly, transport linkages will be crucial – and not just to Sydney’s CBD. But already a decision on how to build those transport links is dividing the state’s influential transport lobbies. Should rail lines run from the east or from the south? Should they connect from Parramatta or Penrith? The answers to these questions will control the outcome of tens of billions of dollars in potential land value increases. And they will help shape the city for decades to come. An extension of the South West Rail Link from Leppington in Sydney’s south-west to Badgerys Creek has been on the drawing board since 1994 and is the most likely first option for a rail link to the airport. “It is the easiest, most pragmatic and most cost-effective solution to a known problem,” a state transport planner says. “You don’t need to activate billions of dollars of additional infrastructure to make it work.” The quickest that trains could run along an extended South West Rail Link from the new airport to Sydney’s CBD would be about 50 minutes – “assuming we used every trick in the book”, this planner says. The problem with that in the eyes of other experts is that passengers will demand a rail service that has only one or two stops to the CBD to ensure a super-fast connection. Therefore, there is a push to build a rail connection to the airport that does not hook into the city’s existing rail network. “The bottom line is that a dedicated rail link is the only one that will work. Commuter links and airport links are very different,” another transport expert says. “Passengers want single-deck trains with big doors and lots of storage space.” The government’s most recent plans do not make provisions for a rail line to the airport when it opens in 2025. However, they leave open the way for rail services to eventually be built by extending the South West Rail Link or building a dedicated airport express rail service from an unspecified “key transport hub” in the Sydney basin.


A recent options paper prepared by the state and federal governments canvassed a range of proposals for how to service the new airport, including extending a metro line between Sydney’s CBD and Parramatta to Badgerys Creek. Another was a direct express service from Sydney's CBD via Parramatta. While a 160 kilometre-an-hour express service could whisk passengers from the airport to the central city in less than 30 minutes, this would be one of the most expensive projects because it would require tunnels for much of the way. The government has not put a price tag on any of the options but the paper suggested the most expensive could top a eye-watering $25 billion. The indicative layout for the airport allows for two possible rail routes across the site: one along a corridor under the terminal at right angles to the runways, and another parallel to and between the runways. The rail line through the airport site will be mostly underground to allow for at least one station in the terminal precinct. While transport links such as roads are vital, critics say the new airport will not justify a multi-billion-dollar rail link from the day it opens. “If you build the rail link, on day one it won’t be full of people,” one says. Melbourne has flirted with a rail line to Tullamarine Airport on many occasions. But almost half a century after it was opened, the airport still relies solely on road links. In Sydney’s case, most agree it will be crucial to preserve a transport corridor along which a rail line to Badgerys Creek could eventually be built. In the meantime, a major upgrade of roads in and around the site of the airport is under way, including a $1.58 billion widening of the Northern Road between Narellan and Penrith. Construction of the M12, a new east-west motorway between the M7 and the Northern Road, is scheduled to be completed before Western Sydney Airport opens in the middle of next decade.