Melbourne’s embrace of 2nd airport will sideline Sydney
- Share
Melbourne’s 2nd airport at Avalon is getting a fast tracked international terminal, leaving Sydney to choke on its mistakes
A 60s throwback today, Avalon tomorrow will be unrecognisable: Wikipedia Commons
The decisions taken at federal and state levels today to fast track an international terminal at Melbourne’s 2nd airport at Avalon underscore the political as well as topographical advantages the Victorian capital is using to take economic growth off Sydney.
It is true that Avalon Airport hasn’t been a huge success so far. But it is perfectly placed to take advantage of two things that are in short supply in Sydney, which is flat development space for the industries and suburbs that will ultimately make it highly successful, and political common sense.
Victoria understands something which NSW politics has never been able to grasp under any state government of any political persuasion for a lifetime, which is that smart infrastructure investments, including airports, drive the economic activity that supports its revenue from growth, and new industries, and new sources of demand, such as Asia, in the 21st century.
The contrast with NSW and Sydney is deeply alarming, for those that like the harbour city, and wonder where it will ever get the funds to correct accumulated deficiencies in rail, road and maritime facilities, and thus enable state revenue boosting growths in employment and productive investments in general.
Like his predecessors, NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell is by deeds and words, clearly captive of the short term interests of Sydney Airport’s owners, and claims to believe that international visitors will begin and end their journeys to Sydney by rail from Canberra, and that the existing airport can cope with the Asian century until 2049, because Max Moore-Wilton told him this was so.
Those claims are fanciful and perplexing, even more so given the Federal Government’s insistence that it doesn’t want to build at the reserved Badgerys Creek site, which is publicly owned and could be developed at no public cost by whomever the it is sold to, but construct it instead on the undulating parts of the Wilton site, that surround the flat parts, which are being covered in housing estates.
With the double disadvantage of the Federal fetish for Wilton, and O’Farrell’s comprehensive denial of the realities of the Asia century, Sydney is in real trouble, and this becomes ever more apparent with the Avalon international terminal fast tracking that will arise from today’s announcements.
Melbourne has a reasonable airport at Tullamarine. But as the greater Melbourne economy expands, the pricing tension at both domestic and international levels between facilities at Tullamarine and Avalon will add to the city’s competitive investment propositions compared to a Sydney where scarcity pricing will inevitably be used to disadvantage those airlines that choose to serve it, and quite likely drive away the regional carriers even though their right of access to Sydney Airport is set in legislative granite for all time.
The laws that guarantee right of access of regional flights to Sydney do not make that access affordable, which means that those flights will be forced to serve links to other airports where international connections are on the rise, and some of the domestic reasons for flight from centres like Coffs Harbour, Tamworth, or the central western towns, can either be met by driving congested roads or flying to Canberra, Brisbane, or a Melbourne Airport.
Please login below to comment, OR simply register here :
Thank you for registering, we have just sent you a confirmation email, which includes your new password to be entered below.
Melbourne with now 2.5 runways (1.5 at Mel and 1 at Avalon) and Brisbane with two coming soon-ish leaves poor old Sydney with a little more than 1.5 (the short runway is useless for international flights) and Canberra with one runaway means that Sydney’s central tourist/business focus will over the next 20 years or fewer become an add on (at best) to Chinese and Indian and other tourists (and businees people). Oh so dumb and so arrogant!!!
It never made sense to privatise Sydney except for the most short term and ideological considerations. Private enterprise indeed. What, it’s competing with all the other international airports in Sydney?
I agree with what you say Ben, but it is a pity governments of various persuasions haven’t seen fit to link Tullamarine to Melbourne city with a fast rail service. The bus journey to Southern Cross Station (?) is tedious in the extreme and a taxi can cost the same as the airfare from Sydney – well, almost.
I’ve never landed at Avalon, just seen the airport from the highway to Geelong, but what are connections to the city like? I imagine it is bus also? Is there a good service to Geelong or other nearby country centres, eg Bacchus Marsh, Ballarat or even Bendigo – or is that too far a catchment area? I suppose the same applies to Tullamarine.
The choices are a bus, which I haven’t taken, or cheap parking, compared to the charges at Tullamarine. As some of the reports today indicate the Vic govt is promising to build a rail link, in that a small realignment of the Geelong line would allow a station at the terminal. (It’s a bit more complicated than that, as a search will reveal.)
I don’t mind the Tullamarine bus but would certainly like to get a train which would get me to an easy transfer to the rest of the suburban and CBD lines, or onto tram lines. Oddly enough when I first used Essendon I am pretty certain there was still a tram terminus that would take you all the way back to town through Parkville, however I never used that either.
Melbourne has exceptional growth opportunities, which with a generosity of vision and thoughtful planning will bring amenity and good transport options with that expansion. We can dream. Whatever connects the CBD to Tullamarine should also allow for easy connection to new habitats north of the airport, and maybe a high speed link to Ballarat.
Those plans need to be in the context of a greater Melbourne that by 2100 might have a population of 16 million, rather than 4 million. But those numbers have to come with a more sustainable, more thoughtful approach to how we live.
Yet the outlines are but the shimmerings of a mirage in 2012, and we can only try, somehow, to influence the future into being one that is better, not worse, than the long forgotten past, the past in which we lived.
To compare Avalon to the second Sydney airport tussle is fanciful because the political ramifications of weaning the owners of KSA out of a lucrative income is not as great as it would be in Melbourne, although I’m sure the owners at Tullamarine wouldn’t be too pleased about today’s announcement.
If a rail link gets built to Avalon, then it might prove to be a reasonable PAX competitor but I doubt that it ever get past the point of being any more than a complementary alternative to Tulla (as in an additional runway).
The real danger to both Sydney and Tullamarine is a shift of infrastructure dependent business migrating to cheaper land around or within Avalon much like as has happened at Essendon, but without the aircraft movement or curfew restrictions. Even so, Essendon has boomed since being taken over by LinFox. There is no doubt this will happen in time at Avalon too.
As an airport, Tulla seems to be bursting at the seams and for some cynics, has become nothing more than a giant glorified car park. Now that Avalon has been freed from its shackles perhaps the owners might seriously look at building the long put off third runway before the encroaching surrounding suburbs are populated by NIMBYs. Nothing like a little competition to spur on some long needed development whether it be at Tulla or Badgerys Creek.
Time will tell.
Everyone is now getting what they asked for, whether they articulated it or not: 1. Sydney is gifting economic growth to Melbourne and Brisbane; 2. Tullamarine has successfully blocked a rail link to maximise its monopoly profits through price-gouging the public; 3. Avalon has successfully lobbied the Victorian government to build a rail spur line onto the Geelong-Melbourne-line, which neutralises its competitive disadvantage through being further away than Tulla; 4. Victoria and Queensland have the first and second-cheapest capital city airport charges for airlines because they are the only states with airport competition.
While I congratulate Victoria on getting a second international airport at the Defence owned Avalon, please don’t forget poor old Brisbane having to get by with only three international airports.
While those outside SE Qld probably don’t think of Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast as Brisbane Airports in that way, both are only slightly more than one hours drive from Brisbane CBD. That makes them viable alternate destination/departure points if the price and or scheduling is right.
Gold Coast has flights to New Zealand, Singapore and Japan while Sunshine with it’s 30 metre wide runway is limited to New Zealand A320/B737 flights. (New 45 metre runway planned)
And dare I ram it home once again, if I live in Wollongong I have to land at Sydney Airport, if I live on the Gold or Sunshine Coasts I have my own airport. Can you imagine how busy Brisbane Airport would be if those two alternatives did not exist? Build airports where people want to go.
(monopoly profits through price-gouging the public) … for car-parking.
Sydney also has an Avalon; it’s called Richmond
Nightflier I did not count Richmond in my runway count as it is not used commercially as yet.
The missing rail link at Tullamarine has it’s origins not with the airport owners, but in the Kennett Government’s agreement with Transurban for the construction and concession of Citylink. Quite clearly a price gouging infrastructure provider does not want leakage of profits and during Kennett’s summer sale of state assets plenty of pockets got lined with gold. There is however no doubting that Melbourne airport has also been able to leverage on the Citylink agreement to it’s advantage.
As for the Sydney debacle, its all very clear. You just have to take the point of view that politicians do not enter politics for the betterment of society or their constituents, but for their own selfish reasons. Once in the cosy club all energy is used in renewing membership to the club which just happens to coincide with the electoral cycle.
What is sad about this is a politician that approved a second airport at Badgery’s Creek would have performed the single biggest contribution(it is our money after all) to current and future generations since ………… but would definitely be added to the list of one term leaders.
Please login below to comment, OR simply register here :
Thank you for registering, we have just sent you a confirmation email, which includes your new password to be entered below.