The Sydney Airport Group now features predominantly in, and behind, the orchestrated stories in the general media about how they need an Adani (or $1 billion) of government money in order to extend their monopoly grip on airport landing and handling charges, and airport parking and retailing fees, to the entire greater metropolitan area once the second Sydney Airport at Badgerys Creek in western Sydney opens in 2026.
But these are ransom notes. They say, “Give us your money or we we won’t exercise our right to build and operate the new airport needed do things we can’t do in the current overcrowded airport.”
If, for example, one were to visit The Australian’s aviation landing page, one would find by complete coincidence a story saying development of Badgerys Creek would be unviable without government support, and another about how greenfield airport projects come with significant upfront costs. Who would have thought?
The Australian seems, at times, to be a red-blooded, free-market journal, while at others, it just publishes obedient and obsequious exercises in dictation from vested interests.
The whinging from Sydney Airport’s owners appears to heard more clearly at The Australian than the misery its shortcomings inflict on airlines and their customers, and even commuters unlucky enough to have navigate around it by road or under it by train, not all of which are the fault of those owners.
Sydney Airport has quite a few issues to legitimately complain about, but asking for public funds to extend its monopoly over airport charges on travelers, airlines, and on-site retailers is more than a bit rich.
If Sydney Airport’s owners can’t hack the upfront costs of taking up its rights to grab a second Sydney Airport, which it purchased when it bought the existing eastern airport, it should get out of the way and let others risk their capital for what look like very high rewards over the life of a 99 year lease.
Sydney would then gain the full benefit of competition between those two widely separated airports, which will, in reality, serve two cities occupying the same sprawling Sydney metropolitan basin.
This morning’s “new” angle on the second airport, in the Fairfax media, doesn’t add to the barrage of pro-Sydney Airport monopoly stories. It argues that the new airport should be thrown completely open to unfettered access by foreign carries, which has always been the assumption of the tourism lobbies, and the big and powerful offshore aviation powers like Emirates and Singapore Airlines.
Even if growth in international travel to Australia fell back to more modest levels than seen in the last 10 years, the demand for access to a Sydney gateway nine years from now is going to exceed by a very large margin the capacity of the existing Sydney airport.
The pressure to expel small town country services from Sydney Airport today will be replaced by the demands of the international partners of Australia’s mainline domestic airlines to accommodate more of their giant 777-Xs and A380s and stretched A350s on their lucrative yet tiny Sydney Airport.
The only way Sydney can overcome decades of denial about the need for a big new airport to handle 21st-century air travel demand is to throw Badgerys Creek open to all. Everyone in the game, whether tourism operators or the airlines, has known and quietly acknowledged that for some time.
*This article was originally published at Plane Talking
So is the privatisation of airport monopolies less than successful?
I haven’t, (though perhaps should have) familiarised myself with the RoI history of Sydney Airports. I think it’s quite ‘healthy’, if you have had money in there. How long did it take them to provide even a semblance of a reasonable pickup system for those wanting to not park, but pre-arrange a pickup of a relative, (mostly), and get the hell out of that purgatorial nightmare?
And why, and under what pressures, were they granted the option anyway? Even if ‘paid for’, it’s now a case of Bailed Up!
I know it’s pears and apples in traffic numbers/size, but Portland OR is, as an example, a pleasurable airport through which to transit. A decades-long mess here, with all Federal Governments having necrosed hands from sitting on them, ever mindful of the Surrounding Seats Syndrome.
SAG can go to hell. They desperately need competition to break the monopolistic gouging!
What’s worse than a government monopoly?
A private one.
Why on earth is the Liberal Party / Coalition supporting Sydney Airport’s bid to extend its monopoly to Sydney’s second airport? There is no rationalism here. It’s insane!
A few years ago, long after Sydney Airports took over, I picked up my daughter on her return from a study trip to Rome. It was Haj time and her flight came via Bahrain. Every second Muslim in Sydney seemed to be there to pick up a relative. It was hot and sweaty and there was nothing on offer for those waiting. If you treated cattle like that you would have been prosecuted by the RSPCA. Enough of this thieving mongrel company. Begone with their monopoly and if they want taxpayers dollars, give them to a competitor instead. Too long have they sucked the traveller’s blood.