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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1996 Week 2 Hansard (29 February) . . Page.. 462 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

London airport it was asserted - I thought this was rather humorous - that it had almost reached the stage where it was a huge shopping complex with an airfield attached. Those comments, made by people from all around the world, I felt, added something to the debate about what an airport is. It can be something different from what we have often thought an airport to be.

We were informed of the Government's then intention to sell most of the airports in Australia, and I think the program then was that Canberra Airport, amongst others, would come up in 1997 after the major airports were sold in 1996. I think the Government's program on that matter might have slipped a bit, and I have not heard much about what the current plan is. The committee felt that it was timely for the Government to look at what it saw the airport to be and whether it was in its interest to have a share in that airport no matter what happens to it in the future. We felt that the Government should have such an interest, so we made some recommendations to the Government.

It is pleasing to note that the Government has established a task force to look at just those issues. I hope that their terms of reference are very wide-ranging. In terms, for example, of things like the use of the Canberra Airport as an international freight terminal, that requires the agreement of a lot of people. The Government might well have that intention, the Federal Airports Corporation might agree, and the Federal Government might agree; but if the airlines do not want to fly in here you are wasting your time. I would hope that this task force, in looking at this issue, might go and talk to some of the major international airlines to see what would be required to attract them to Canberra.

What is it about Sydney and Melbourne airports that makes operations difficult? What is it that makes airports like Canberra, perhaps, attractive to them? What do you have to do to make them change their mind and move their fields of operation? There are factors like aircraft maintenance facilities and the like that would be part of that decision. If a major airline decided to use Canberra as its international freight hub, it would automatically follow, I think, that they would want to have some aircraft maintenance capacity here as well, and that might mean different things for this community.

I have a feeling personally, and I will be interested to hear the report of the task force when it gets round to it, that the notion of Canberra Airport becoming an international airport for passengers is receding rather than getting closer. That personal view has to do with the fact that aircraft manufacturers, in every generation, seem to build bigger aeroplanes. Even the present generation of international aircraft - the jumbos, the 747, the McDonnell Douglas DC10 and the Lockheed L10/11 - are too big to operate from this airfield. It would require significant modification for safe operation, extension of the runways, widening of the runways, additional navigation equipment and the like.

Those aircraft, in some respects, are getting towards the end of their lives, and I suspect that the next generation of intercontinental aircraft will be bigger again. In fact, I know that British Aerospace is planning its next international aircraft, which they expect will carry something of the order of 1,000 people. That is about twice as big as the jets that

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