[Peetwo]

Betsy's minions and airport oversight?? - Part II 

Extract from the recently updated GAAN 'General Aviation Strategy 2024', under '6.2 Airport and Infrastructure Facilities':

6.2.1 National Airports Safeguarding Framework

All airports should receive consistent and effective protection from the National Airports Safeguarding Framework (NASF), regardless of the state or local government area in which they are located. NASF protections do not just apply to aircraft noise management, but also to development planning controls by government at every level. It should be government policy to strengthen NASF with measures that include pro-active inspections, assessments and interventions when the interests of airports clash with incompatible property development and other competing objectives.

6.2.2 Capital City Secondary Airports

Experience has shown that the Department’s “light touch” approach to the management and governance of the leased secondary airport airports, in some cases, has led to refused renewals for GA airport tenants, steep increases in rent, inadequate facilities and shrinking areas of land on these airports for future aeronautical use, reducing the utility, and future growth of airport operations that are critical to the national interest.

Strengthening the existing framework, to achieve transparency in the airport master planning process, and to implement more rigorous controls, is urgently needed. The GAAN recommends that airports policy be adjusted to:

• Closely scrutinise all leased secondary airport master and major development plans to ensure that the interests of the GA sector are adequately protected
• Ensure that aviation sub-tenancies are offered for periods equal to those applicable to nonaeronautical developments, so that general aviation businesses have security of tenure and can plan, finance and grow their operations for long term success
• Amend the Airports Act 1996 to:

o Separate the planning provisions applicable to secondary airports used by general aviation from the provisions that govern major capital city primary airports, with separate development planning approval thresholds and specific provisions to protect the GA sector

o Establish robust and enforceable rules to ensure that transparency of all draft master and major development plans at leased airports used by general aviation, including accountabilities to keep them open to public scrutiny, so that the current version of such documents is visible at all times to all stakeholders, including the community generally and the GA sector

o Create enforceable land use planning obligations on the operators of leased secondary airports to demonstrate conclusively that all proposed measures which:

• Allocate land or buildings to any purpose
  
• Change the allocation of land or building allocation or create, revise, or remove zones and their planned or intended purposes (however described)
  
• Change or initiate aeronautical zone boundaries (however described) and/or aeronautical facilities 
  

are fully justified and demonstrated to the satisfaction of the Minister to be in the interests of general aviation and other users of the airport and surrounding community.

  
All good, well considered observations and recommendations from the GAAN. However as we have seen repeatedly over many decades such factual observation and independent advice usually holds the attention of the bureaucracy for the total length of the low importance Media Release...  

Therefore it was with some interest that I read the following Oz Flying article...  :

Department moves to reassure GA over Airport Access

28 November 2024



The Department of Infrastructure and Transport this week detailed steps it intends to take to ensure general aviation retains access to leased federal airports (LFAs) such as the metropolitan Class D airports.

Access to airport infrastructure is key to the Federal Government's strategy for regenerating GA in Australia, but it has been threatened in the recent past by airport leasing companies (ALCs) that have submitted plans that reduce the amount of land reserved for aviation use and have demolished aviation infrastructure in favour of non-aviation commercial development.

In response to questions this masthead asked, a departmental spokesperson clarified the actions the government would take to ensure access was retained.

"Upon the release of the Aviation White Paper, the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government wrote to leased federal airports outlining the Australian Government’s expectation that draft master and major development plans ensure appropriate access for general aviation," the spokesperson said.

"The department monitors general aviation activities at leased federal airports by:

• considering how draft master plans propose to develop and safeguard aviation precincts from new non-aviation development when providing advice to the Minister
  
• reviewing new building activities, through the Airport Building Control Regulations 1996, to ensure consistency with the in-force master plan and/or major development plan, and
  
• conducting lease and compliance reviews at least once every three years for each leased federal airport."
  

LFAs must have their final master plans approved by the minister, which has largely been a rubber-stamping process until the last three years when both Moorabbin and Archerfield had their master plans knocked back.

"It is appropriate for master plans to consider the interests of users of the airport, including existing tenants when implementing land use changes," the spokesperson said. "For example, the current in-force Moorabbin Airport Master Plan 2021 prevents further non-aviation development within the aviation precinct."

However, the Federal Government oversees the leasing arrangements for the airports, but has little control over who the ALCs lease buildings to, which opens the door for ALCs to lease hangars to non-aviation companies even though the buildings are in a designated aviation-use zone.

The departmental spokesperson also said a comprehensive review of the Airports Act 1996 scheduled for before 2030 would coincide with the time when the leases on the LFAs would expire and the ALCs would be applying to exercise their option for another 50-year lease.

"The Government will also seek to include examination of general aviation market dynamics in relation to airport access in the next Productivity Commission inquiry into the economic regulation of airports," the spokesperson said. "This will include looking at federally leased secondary metropolitan airports for the first time."

The 2024 aviation white paper notes that the metropolitan Class D airports are predicting increases in movements over the next few decades, which is likely to require more aviation infrastructure to cope with expansion.

In the 2023-24 financial year, the six metropolitan Class D airports handled more than 1.2 million movements, which accounts for one third of all movements through towered airports in Australia.

Comments from CM and Sandy in reply, via the AP emails... 

Do I smell an election in the wind?

“Access to airport infrastructure is key to the Federal Government's strategy for regenerating GA in Australia, but it has been threatened in the recent past …”

The lies come so easy to these bureaucrats.  Lots of people and representative organisations have been complaining, loudly, for decades, about “aviation infrastructure” being “demolished in favour of non-aviation commercial development.”  Those complaints fell mostly on deliberately deaf departmental ears (a deafness encouraged, of course, by either an apathetic Minister or one whose political interests were aligned with the commercial interests of the airport lessees and developers).

“It is appropriate for master plans to consider the interests of users of the airport.”

No shit?  The law actually compels the Minister to do that.  But what the Department has done for decades is simply regurgitate whatever the airport lessee had to say about the subject of GA users, on the way to recommending that the Minister rubber-stamp whatever the lessee proposed, including “aviation infrastructure” being “demolished in favour of non-aviation infrastructure.”

Although the Airports Act was drafted by the work experience kid in OPC, and includes loopholes through which airport lessees have been allowed to drive bullock wagons, the primary cause of the decades of destruction of aviation infrastructure for GA has been the abject failure of the Department and the Minister to administer the Airports Act properly.    They instead facilitated and approved master plans that could and should have been rejected.

So now the bureaucrats concoct a story about destruction of aviation infrastructure for GA being a “recent” problem that is being addressed through steps which could and should have been taken decades ago.  On the eve of an election, an epiphany! 

What a surprise.

Gimmee a break.

&..Sandy in reply to CM:

"..How true, but we elect the Parliament that has the final responsibility..."

And Sandy in reply to Hitch...

Steve Hitchen,

Editor Australian Flying.

Congratulations for exposing the failed policy around the leases of secondary airports to property developers.

Having learned to fly at Moorabbin in 1966 and frequent visitor for many years, I’ve witnessed the irresponsible alienation of our Commonwealth airport land away from General Aviation use.

It would be no different to government leasing off half a freeway or vital railway terminus yards to property developers.

It’s really extraordinary that an educated society can produce such a backward outcome. And not only for the sake of some GA operators but for the general wellbeing of all Australians to have such vital infrastructure truncated without thought to the National security aspect of a strong aviation industry and our aerial mobility capability. Quite apart from the efficiencies of air mobility from an economic point of view.

Common wealth no longer.

MTF...P2