Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, the citizens got together and paid for an airport to be built on land the citizens own as common wealth. Let’s call the airport ‘Bairnfair’.
Bairnfair became a base for part of the country’s Defence Force as well as a facility for all of the citizens of the land to use for air transport, flying training and other civil aviation activities. Soon there were a couple of Defence Force squadrons and numerous civilian general aviation charter and flying schools operating along with the airlines operating flights in and out of Bairnfair.
The citizens were happy because Bairnfair was part of and contributing to the common wealth. Many other airports in the land far away were also built on common wealth land at the cost of the common wealth.
Then one day someone in the government of the land far away came up with a brilliant idea: Why not lease Bairnfair to someone, so that the someone would maintain and operate the airport while paying money to the common wealth in return? What could possibly go wrong? Let’s lease
lots of these common wealth airports to someone!
The government of the day wasn’t stupid. No way. It passed an Act called the Land Far Away Airports Act, the first object of which is to “promote the sound development of civil aviation”. The lessees of these common wealth airports would be obliged under the Act to maintain and operate the airport in accordance with a master plan approved by a government Minister. The Minister would be obliged under the Act to have regard to the extent to which carrying out the plan would meet present and future requirements of civil aviation users of the airport, before approving the plan.
Surely civil aviation would not only survive but thrive at these common wealth airports under this brilliant plan in the land far away!
The government then went about the process of implementing its brilliant plan. In the case of Bairnfair, a 50 year lease with a 49 year option was granted at a reported cost to the lessee of $65 million. On those numbers, that’s nearly $650,000 a year paid
to the common wealth. What a great outcome!
But then…
One dark day the Defence Department received a rent bill for the land on which its facilities were built at Bairnfair. The rent bill was about $1.2 million per month. (Yes children, that’s $1.2 million per month.) The Defence Department also received a bill for landing and parking charges for Defence Force aircraft using Bairnfair. That bill was about $160 thousand per month.
This perturbed the Defence Department somewhat. The Defence Department – part of and paid for out of the common wealth – occupying land owned as common wealth and using facilities that were built at the cost of the common wealth – was now liable for around $1 billion in rent and aircraft landing and parking charges over the remaining life of a lease, for which the lessee will pay the common wealth $65 million.
What a bargain for the citizens! $65 million paid
to the common wealth and only $1 billion paid out of the common wealth for a common wealth Department to occupy and use common wealth land!
But that billion is chicken feed in this land far away. The Defence Department occupied only a small area of Bairnfair.
In a different part of Bairnfair, the citizens involved in civil aviation received their own new rent bills and landing and parking charges. Most could not afford them and eventually moved out. No flying training organisation remained.
This suited the lessee of Bairnfair’s interests, because a lot of this civil aviation activity was nowhere near as lucrative as the output of the work of building offices and shops and other things that had nothing to do with civil aviation but produced new rivers of gold. Alas, no part of those rivers flowed into the common wealth. They flowed mostly into the pocket of a single citizen who slowly climbed the far away land’s ‘rich list’.
Where aviation facilities interfered with these lucrative non-aviation developments - not lucrative for the common wealth, mind you - the aviation facilities were sacrificed. Runway getting in the way of more lucrative property development? Shorten the runway! At some common wealth airports, runways inconvenient to non-aviation developments were simply bulldozed. These airports shouldn’t have been clogged up with all these pesky runways in the first place. After all, how many do you need?
The airlines flying in and out of Bairnfair received similar treatment. At one point the CEO of the far away land’s flag carrier, Satnaq,
likened the lessee of Bairnfair to “a crew of Somali pirates” after – according to Satnaq – the lessee effectively ransomed one of Satnaq’s aircraft by parking an escort vehicle in its way, blocking its take off, until an $18,000 fee was paid to the lessee by credit card because the aircraft had to divert to Bairnfair at short notice. What a
wonderful way for the citizens on board the aircraft to be treated
at an airport which is part of their common wealth. They rejoiced at the opportunity to be in the middle of a willy-wagging competition between obscenely rich people. After all, that’s why these common wealth airports exist in this land far, far away.
And where was the Minister of the day and the Minister’s department administering the Land Far Away Airports Act in all this? Surely the only way the Minister could have proper regard to whether carrying out the master plan for Bairnfair would meet present and future requirements of civil aviation users, would be to consider independent analysis of what those requirements were first. Alas, the Minister of the day and the Minister’s department simply accepted the airport lessee’s own assessment of those requirements, as well as the lessee’s assertion that more non-airport property development was necessary to ‘support’ the aviation activities of the airport. No independent analysis was done or considered by the Minister or the Minister’s department. Why bother? After all, the common wealth Minister and the common wealth public service in this far away land are not there to administer the common wealth Land Far Away Airports Act to achieve its objects.
And so it was at many other common wealth airports across the land far away. They were milked for private gain while many of the citizens who had been involved in civil aviation at those airports were charged into the wilderness.
But then the citizens thought really hard about it. They wracked their brains and couldn’t recall
anyone who had become a millionaire on the back of the common wealth airports when they were maintained and operated by the government.
And then it struck the citizens: Individuals now had the opportunity to become not just millionaires - but billionaires - on the back of these airports, this being an obvious manifestation of the efficiency of the free market (in monopoly assets comprising vast open spaces of flat land which only entrepreneurial geniuses would be able to perceive were being wasted on pointless civil aviation trivia).
Hooray! cried the citizens!
This success so inspired the government of the land far away that it set up an Air Navigation Service Provider whose executives accumulate millions even if vast tracts of airspace are, through incompetent mismanagement, frequently declared TIBA. The citizens were not worried, though, because the Land Far Away Aviation Safety Authority, whose executives also accumulate millions, said there is nothing to worry about.
And everyone in the land far away lived happily ever after, comforted in the knowledge that ever-increasing amounts of common wealth were ending up in an ever-diminishing numbers of hands.
THE END
(Don’t worry kiddies: These sorts of things would only happen in the kinds of places where governments hound poor and defenceless people for money that isn’t lawfully owed. If these sorts of things happened in Australia,
people would start losing faith in politicians and government institutions.)
