• Rob Freestone

18 January 2010The federal government's aviation white paper leaves important questions unanswered, writes Rob Freestone

JUST BEFORE Christmas the Rudd government released its long awaited National Aviation White Paper, Flight to the Future. Despite the many issues it covers, from air traffic management to industry training, the reception for the report has largely been humdrum. A poll being run by the industry journal Aviation Business gives it the thumbs-down, perhaps because most of the critical recommendations had already been well telegraphed.

The decision to ditch Badgerys Creek and embark again on a solution to Sydney’s long-term aviation needs has inevitably attracted much attention and will ensure that the fraught search for a second Sydney airport will generate at least another two years of headlines.

But what of the planning regime for existing airports, one of the most contentious political issues over the last decade since the Commonwealth flogged airports off to the private sector in the late 1990s? The outcome, a work in progress, has been a spate of non-aeronautical development: shops, petrol stations, office buildings, business parks, fast food franchises, showrooms, even university campuses that don’t seem to have much to do with planes taking off and landing.

Sydney Airport’s hedged bets for $250m retail and cinema or office complexes sited between the two parallel runways in 2006 caused community uproar. It proved to be one of the few proposals actually turned down by the federal minister for transport, who otherwise was perfectly happy to approve a big-box Ikea at Adelaide Airport, brickworks at Perth, and a supermarket at Brisbane.

The smaller “general aviation” airports – which remain a Commonwealth responsibility surely for historic rather than genuine national public-interest reasons – have also been hot spots: Jandakot at Perth is welcoming a Harvey Norman store next year, Essendon in Melbourne has been transformed into an auto alley, and Bankstown in Sydney has managed to close a runway but open a Bunnings.

These developments are defended by the free enterprise airports as risk-averse diversification of their revenue streams, especially prudent during economic downturns.

But opposition has come from local and state government. The major concern is their being shut out of the formal decision-making process by a federal statute also making no provision for any contributions to off-airport infrastructure as is the norm under state planning legislation. The general public, less attuned to the invisible geography of land ownership, and happy to shop or work wherever, seems rather less concerned.

The commercialisation of the airport platform was inevitably given a good airing through the National Aviation Review, which attracted a total of over 500 submissions issues paper and green paper released at either end of 2008.

An analysis of comments on the green paper by the UNSW City Futures Research Centre for the QUT Airport Metropolis research project revealed that airport planning was the number one issue, even leaving aside noise impacts and the special case of a second Sydney airport. Non-aeronautical development ranked just below community consultation as an issue and it was the third most important issue mentioned across combined government submissions.

Yet somehow the release of the white paper just before Christmas seems to have sucked much of the life from this issue. Why is that?

The actions foreshadowed, as far as they go, appear to have generally been positively accepted. Interestingly, the local airport mayors, state government interests, and shopping centre owners so prominent in recent years appear to have been virtually silent. Put this down to the recommendations which call for new planning coordination forums, community consultation committees, and the projection of vigilance and scrutiny by federal authorities to possibly contentious developments even if these are not of the multi million-dollar scale captured by the normal provisions of the Airports Act.

The organic philosophy of cooperation and collaboration preached by Canberra, with aviation not commerce flagged as the guiding mantra, sends the right message and presumably has been well received.

Since 1998, 65% of all major development plans have dealt with non-aviation proposals, a trend that is likely to continue. The question is how the white paper recommendations will address the increasing diversification of airports into ‘multiple service providers’ and the planning problems.

For the time being, one reason why this issue has gone off the boil has been the GFC, whose legacy is apparent in acres of vacant land and unoccupied floorspace on airport land. There has not been the same investor interest with money scarce and returns uncertain.

A second is more structural – inherent investor conservatism when it comes to leasehold rather than freehold tenure. The arrangement of 50 years (with an additional 49 year option) can be an economic turn-off. It has partly encouraged short term visions which account for the cheap factory outlet sheds given great fillip by airport privatisation and explains the rush to get things built early on.

A third is that the new airport has already been irreversibly etched into the urban landscape. With most airports now into their second and third post-privatisation master plans, there are already ministerial approvals in principle for extensive tracts of very flexibly defined mixed-use commercial development.

While Sydney Airport remains somewhat landlocked, Canberra has become an important sub-regional office centre even in spite of metropolitan planning in the 1990s and Brisbane is also well on track to be Australia’s first ‘airport city’. Perth also has an ample land bank and has been able to attract major retail distribution centres and a Rio Tinto facility which effectively runs their entire mining operation in the Pilbara a stone’s throw from the domestic terminal.

After the seasonal goodwill dissipates and more especially as capital investment returns, airport planning will likely resume its highly politicised state. There is not a great deal of detail in the white paper about how the new forums and committees will operate, and the statutory framework giving the Federal Minister the ultimate say remains intact.

Although airports are the Commonwealth’s major planning responsibility there is no mention of integrating this into a more coherent approach to Australian urban policy, let alone carving out a strategic role for the fledgling Major Cities Unit in Canberra.

Much will rely on the transparency of balanced decision-making at the highest level and the readiness of state governments to conceive of airport regions as integrated planning entities in their own right. •

Robert Freestone is Professor of Planning and Urban Development at the University of New South Wales.

Photo: Michael Verhoef