THE NEWSLETTER OF THE SYDNEY DIVISION OF ENGINEERS AUSTRALIA
APRIL 2013
PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
Sydney Airport Sydney Division Key Sponsors
I read an astonishing statement, allegedly made by the then Federal Minister for Transport, Peter Morris in 1986 as follows: “The search for Sydney’s second airport has concluded with the selection of Badgerys Creek”. That was twenty seven years ago and Sydney’s second airport has moved no closer to reality. Twenty seven years has seen incredible growth in size and frequency of international plane movements, and despite the third runway being built, airport movement saturation is looming, and about to become a critical limit on Sydney’s growth, prosperity and air safety. The impending threat to New South Wales tourism, trade and business is devastating. Twenty seven years is an unacceptable period to vacillate on a decision, and in that time new airports have been built in Singapore and Hong Kong, and now Melbourne is moving to build its third airport. On a world scale, Sydney is the only international city in the world, to which international flights are completely banned between 11 pm and 6 am (some international airports do have night time bans but only in cities which have an additional airport). Another fascinating air travel anomaly is that our capital city of Canberra has an airport which is called “Canberra International Airport” but strangely it doesn’t have any international flights (although there once was a flight service offered direct between Fiji and Canberra but it was cancelled through lack of interest). Among many alternative solutions proposed to the Mascot problem, one proposal has been a combined Sydney-Canberra International Airport, built in the Sydney Canberra corridor with high speed rail to and between both cities. Clearly, the airport runways don’t have to be built adjacent to
densely populated urban precincts and I’m sure that the ten thousand airport jobs would be welcomed with open arms by regional New South Wales. Properly planned, with dedicated appropriate rural buffer zones underneath runway approach paths makes more sense than irritating densely packed anti-airport suburbs in Sydney. The solution to Sydney’s airport cannot be that difficult, but it seems that the fear of electorate backlash in disaffected electorates is a paralysing force to a government that is pre-occupied with being returned at the next poll. It’s time for change, it’s time for action and it’s time that people who are genuinely interested in the continued prosperity, progress and success of our city, state and nation make it clear that waiting another twenty seven years for resolution of any important social life blood infrastructure issue is unsatisfactory, unpalatable and totally unacceptable. John Nichols BE (Civil), CPEng, FIEAust President, Engineers Australia Sydney Division