This paper disputes prevalent narratives that the decision to build a third runway at Sydney's Kingsford Smith Airport KSA) was a policy succcess. It argues that congestion at KSA was largely caused by unpredicted changes in the worldwide aviation sector, and not by past government failure to back the construction of a third runway.

This working paper describes the development of the 1988 metropolitan strategy for Sydney, its planning objectives and instruments. A comment on the paper focuses on the six major pressures on the formulation of the strategy and asks a series of critical questions of each.