When the planners first sited Canberra Airport in the mid-1920s, they did a good job. The airport is at once close to the city and Parliament, but away from residential areas. The good planning then, is having some fall-out now, because the proximity to the city increases the site’s development value.
There will be some winners and some losers. They will be jockeying for position in the next few weeks because the National Cpaital Authority has just issued a Draft Amendment to the National Capital Plan for the airport. It will be open for public comment for eight weeks. After that the joint parlaimentary committee responsible for the territory might look at it.
The saga began in 1996 with the Federal Government’s $700 million plan to sell the major airports. Canberra was sold to Capital Airport Group for $66.5 million in 1998. Federal authorities wanted a competitive airline industry. That’s fine as far as it goes, but airports are more than places where aircraft land and takeoff. Huge numbers of people go through them and work at them. There are about two million passenger movements a year through Canberra, for example. That is a large potential market for lots of non-air-travel things: hotels, hair-dressers, books, indeed a large shopping mall and perhaps some IT light industry. If there is a very fast train hub at the airport, Capital Airport Group estimates there will be seven million passsenger movements a year.
That compares with 12 million shoppers going through the Belconnen Mall a year. Sure, the Belconnen shoppers go there to shop whereas the airport people are there primarily for other purposes, but the essential point remains that Canberra Airport has a big retail potential.
Now we have a potential conflict between Federal and Territory aspirations, that would not arise elsewhere. And territory aspirations can be government, business and residential.
The normal pattern has been that when land use changes in the ACT, a change-of-use charge applies. It has been as high as 100 per cent of the difference between the before and after value, but is now about half that. In the case of changing use from, say, a carpark at the airport to a hotel and retail mall, it would be some millions. Without paying that charge, other hotels and retailers might calim the airport is getting an unfair advantage. Also the territory might argue it is missing out on this money.
Capital Airport Group, however, has paid top dollar in an competitive bid for the airport on the understanding that it would be able to do a hotel and retail development.
You might argue therefore that the territory has lost is change of use charge to the Federal Government. Certainly, the territory has lost the opportunity to, say, tender some land near the airport for an airport hotel.
The Federal Government might argue that air transport is a federal matter (under the dreaded foreign-affairs treaty power, the Commonwealth has signed air-traffic treaties) and the ACT is a federal territory, so too bad for the ACT.
As it happens the ACT appears fairly chuffed at what has happened. It does not get all of the control and change-of-use charge it might want, but it would prefer to deal with a local owner in Terry Snow’s Capital Airport Group than with the Federal Airports Corporation of old. Moreover, the ACT will get spin-offs from any development, especially if Canberra gets more hub traffic – for example, putting Melbourne traffic from regional NSW centres through Canberra rather than Sydney.
Other stakeholders are people who want to develop residential land under future flight paths. Some of them have now been blocked by the NSW Government. They might now argue, “”If we can’t have residential development because of the noise we’ll have some hotel, IT and retail development, it could not possibly be noisier than the same development at the airport itself.” Fair call.
The dragway is another stakeholder. It has been shunted between ACT and Federal authorities without getting security of tenure against an expanding airport or alternatively another site.
North Canberra and Jerrabomberra residents maybe losers if increased international and hubbing traffic increases noise.
Capital Airport group has had its draft master plan out for public comment for about a year. Canberra airport, alone in Australia, is subject to some local planning rules, namely the federal rules under the National Capital Plan which comes under the federal Australain Capital Territory (Planning and Land Management) Act. At present the airport master plan may not comply with the National Capital Plan. That plan allows only development “”incidental to”, ”associated with” or that will enhance the operation of an airport. The airport plan, however, calls for a general commercial development zone which may go beyond that. Hence the draft amendment which would clarify the position to allow wider development.
The question is whether anyone will listen to objections that this is a commercial free-kick for the airport against its commercial competitors in Canberra and Queanbeyan, though the issue will be at least vented because the draft amendment must go through a regulation impact statement and the Competition Commission who are keenly interested in this sort of fall out.