[Peetwo]

"Bob the builder, can we build it? - YES WE CAN!!"

Had to laugh when the current WOFTAM 'power games' between the Feds v South Oz pollywaffles was ultimately brought to a head by a couple of innovative billionaire's saying "YES WE CAN", to building a huge battery storage facility inside of 90 days - Luv it!

This got me thinking again about the Wagner Wellcamp success story and how it is now inspiring other entrepreneurs, regional communities and collective small to medium businesses to also say "YES WE CAN!!" 

However the Can'tberra pollywaffles continue to squabble amongst themselves, while the aviation safety & infrastructure bureaucratese have unfettered, ungoverned control of aviation safety policy and aviation infrastructure, like airports...

A perfect example (amongst many - ask Sandy.. ) of the negative effects of successive governments absconding effective governance of M&M and his minions, is perfectly highlighted in the knock on effect of the ill-advised Airport Act 1996 and the government leased airports.

From the other Aunty last week:

Sydney Airport profits $100m on car parking in one year
By Nour Haydar

Posted 6 Mar 2017, 1:20pmMon 6 Mar 2017, 1:20pm | Updated 6 Mar 2017, 4:28pmMon 6 Mar 2017, 4:28pm

Sydney Airport made $97.8 million in profit from car parking fees in just one year, a report released by the ACCC shows, as the consumer body calls for greater regulation of airport competition.

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Lack of airport regulation costs consumers up to $1.6b in fees: ACCC
By business reporter Michael Janda

Posted 6 Mar 2017, 9:53amMon 6 Mar 2017, 9:53am | Updated 6 Mar 2017, 1:45pmMon 6 Mar 2017, 1:45pm

Airlines and their passengers have paid up to $1.6 billion too much for airport access over the past decade due to a textbook example of how not to privatise monopoly assets, the competition regulator says.

Photo: Sydney Airport is the nation's most expensive, including a 73 per cent profit margin on parking. (AAP: Paul Miller)

..The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's (ACCC) latest report into Australia's four biggest airports - Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth - found that profit margins eased slightly for three of the operators last financial year.

However, Brisbane Airport's profit margin increased to 44.9 per cent, and Sydney Airport's 46.7 per cent profit margin would be amongst the highest in corporate Australia.

The airports have dramatically increased revenue per passenger over the past decade, with Brisbane charges up by two-thirds, Perth 43 per cent, Melbourne almost a third and Sydney up 16 per cent.

However, Sydney's charges remain the highest with $17.27 in revenue per passenger.
"The airlines are concerned that they keep getting higher charges from the airports and, of course, they've got to pass that on to consumers," ACCC chairman Rod Sims told RN Breakfast.

Beyond charges for airlines' use of the tarmac and terminal, Australia's airports are making a killing out of parking.

Mr Sims described the airports' car parking profit margins as "quite amazing", and said they get away with such high charges because they also slug taxis, hire cars and shuttle buses with large, and rising, fees to access the airport for drop-offs and pick-ups.

"Their access charges have gone up quite a lot, so the airports don't face much competition," he said.

"It's a great position to be in where you can have this near monopoly car parking and also make it more difficult for your competitors."

ACCC calls for power to regulate airport charges

Mr Sims said the ACCC would like to be given some specific regulatory powers over airports to limit price increases, but so far it has been denied.

"They're completely unregulated. Various governments over time have set them up that way. We've suggested a bit of regulation over time but governments have said they'd rather they stay unregulated," Mr Sims observed.

"The airlines certainly would support us having some role here, whether it's a negotiate/arbitrate role on, whether it's some regulatory role on car parking fees.

"Whenever you have a monopoly that is providing services to average consumers, that have to pay directly through their car parking or indirectly through their airline ticket, I think people do get concerned when they make very high margins."

Mr Sims said such poorly handled privatisations, where governments seek to maximise the sale price by allowing monopolies to operate without regulatory oversight, are a key factor behind community opposition to public asset sales.

"They privatised them and simultaneously took the regulations off," he said.   
         
Audio: Airports textbook example of privatisation gone wrong: Sims (Breakfast)

"So people saw privatisation and they saw charges go up a lot, I mean the aeronautical charges doubled on Sydney airport.

"So, of course, don't be surprised when people see privatisation and link it to higher prices because they've seen a lot of it happen."

Mr Sims said it was also undoubtedly a mistake for the Howard Government to have given Sydney Airport a first right of refusal to build and own Sydney's second airport at Badgery's Creek, "in order to inflate how much money they could sell Sydney Airport for".

"It's fundamentally anti-competitive, and let's hope it doesn't get taken up and we do get an alternative owner," he argued.

Mr Sims said it would be a "great" outcome if the Federal Government built Badgery's Creek, and potentially sold it off to another private owner later.

"Not only would you get the benefits of competition between Badgery's Creek and Sydney Airport, but if you have a common owner of the two airports, that common owner will have an incentive to restrict investment at Badgery's Creek and delay Badgery's Creek so that it can maximise its profits at Sydney Airport."

 
....

Now for the aviation & airports good news - YES WE CAN - stories... :

Reversing regional decline: Riverina locals doing it for themselves

Dimity and Sally Demamiel outside their general store in Darlington Point, in western NSW’s Riverina district. Picture: James Croucher

Larry Walsh at the state-of-the-art ethanol plant he is about to start operating outside Coleambally, NSW. Picture: James Croucher.
[/url][url=http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/reversing-regional-decline-riverina-locals-doing-it-for-themselves/news-story/fc115f0c7c68862f972bd872e3ecf5ea#]
Ean Higgins
The Australian
12:00AM March 3, 2017
[img=0x0]http://pixel.tcog.cp1.news.com.au/track/component/author/0573acb566bb47c45e64e4c55a998aba/?esi=true&t_product=the-australian&t_template=s3/austemp-article_common/vertical/author/widget&td_bio=false[/img]

..Further big plans in the Riverina, all essentially about magnifying and expanding the value of the region’s agricultural production, are on the drawing boards.


Edward River Council, which has amalgamated the Deniliquin and Conargo local government areas, has signed a memorandum of understanding with Queensland transport and logistics group Wagners to build a 2km runway at Deniliquin’s airport.

The plan is to use Airbus A320 cargo planes to fly mainly agricultural products to Brisbane West Wellcamp Airport, near Toowoomba, a major new airfreight field, where the products will be put on cargo jumbos and shipped overseas.

The goal, in particular, is to sell fresh produce from the Riverina into Southeast Asia.
“It gives us a direct link to Asia from this district,” said Edward River Council’s acting director of economic development and business, John Harvie, a former local mayor.

There’s a lot happening in the Riverina: visionary entrepreneurship, innovation, a hunt for export opportunities, new jobs.

It’s just the sort of thing Malcolm Turnbull has been talking up since he became Prime Minister.

Though unevenly spread, the new business activity is starting to reverse a profound regional decline since the millennium drought and the global financial crisis.
Never­theless, the widespread feeling in the Riverina community is that the upturn is not because of state and federal ­government intervention but ­despite it.

And today, also via the Biz Oz   :

Ex-refugee’s $2bn airport plan

12:00amROWAN CALLICK

A former Afghan refugee businessman is in talks to finance a $2bn private airport in Melbourne.

A push for a new airport for Melbourne’s fast-growing southeast is gathering pace, with an Afghan refugee-turned-businessman in talks over financing the multi-billion-dollar ­project.

Alande Mustafa Safi’s Paragon Business Group is offering to build an airport near the Port of Hastings for about $2 billion, with additional backing from an overseas investment partner.

This follows successful development of the Brisbane West Wellcamp private airport at Toowoomba in Queensland.

Paragon, with operations in Melbourne, Shanghai, Dubai and Jakarta, is proposing to develop the new Victorian airport in stages: with an initial domestic focus, before boosting infrastructure sufficiently to become an international airport, at an estimated ­additional cost of $5bn.

The proposal for an airport for the fast-growing Melbourne ­region was first aired in the previous state government’s growth strategy, Plan Melbourne, in ­October 2013.

Mr Safi, 34, told The Australian “the plan was well received at the time, but since then no one has been willing to move it ­forward”.

“Now we are doing so, with ­resources channelled through a single source — our own Paragon Fund,” he said.

“Almost 35 per cent of Melbourne’s population live in the southeast. I live there, in Berwick, and it takes almost an hour and a half to drive to Tullamarine airport in normal conditions, not at peak hours.

“Urban growth plans will ­increase rapidly the population much further from Tullamarine.”

Toowoomba’s Brisbane West Wellcamp airport. Picture: Glenn Hunt

Mr Safi said that his initial plan included not only domestic and connecting flights, but also overnight courier services and freighting fresh goods for export, for which there is fast growing ­demand in China and the Middle East.

Fellow Paragon director ­Gerard Kennedy, a commercially ­focused barrister, has begun ­discussing airport concepts with Cardinia Shire Council planners.

Following a visit for discussions with his key overseas partner — whom he declined to identify before the investor’s due diligence process had been completed — Mr Safi said he planned “to be sitting down with the Victorian government to commence dialogue” within weeks.

In the original airport concept, InvestVictoria said Cardinia shire had identified several locations between Koo Wee Rup and Lang Lang, both about one hour from central Melbourne by road, as ­potential sites. It said: “This would serve one-third of Victoria’s population, including the 300,000 residents of Gippsland. It would have the benefit of good transport connections and the potential of future rail access.”

The Victorian government would work with local government to identify a preferred site and investigate a process for private sector investment.

By 2050, the strategy document said, the airport catchment would grow to about three million — a similar size to southeast Queensland.

Mr Safi first built a mortgage broking business, with about $700 million under management, then a foreign investment portfolio for potential immigrants, chiefly from China, seeking to come to Australia under the Significant Investor Visa program.

His airport proposal would be delivered through a more recently established funds management business, Paragon Premium Investment Fund, which is focusing on development funding, construction loans and property finance.

Like chalk & cheese - A strange dichotomy indeed, on the one hand an out of control aviation safety & infrastructure bureaucracy; on the other entrepreneurial business world with innovators and investors prepared to put money where their mouth's are to back up their ideas for aviation infrastructure in this country...


MTF...P2