Griffo - partial credit and I agree totally
But the demise of aviation infrastructure pre dates the Dick Smith slash and burn. The ALOP process in the mid 80's guaranteed that the government was only interested in the big ticket airports that were handed to the FAC. The department then became a business, not a service, and the rest of aviation was allowed to go hang - 'market forces' were to be allowed to dictate growth and for 'growth' read 'any f@#$ing interest' at all from government.
At least when we had a department that gave a rat's, you wouldn't have had the Q400 introduction disaster where the damn thing didn't fit the standards that most of it's destination ports were built to, and the damn thing is a regional runway destroyer. Decisions like that can't be left in the hands of the airline company beancounters who just get a woody over the $per pax km.
Decisions like that, just like the decisions over national radar coverage and an ILS for a major port like Gold Coast, are national infrastructure decisions and need to be treated as such....But there's no-one who cares.
Thank god this lot weren't in power in the early 1900's. The F#$%ing northern railway out of Sydney woulda terminated at Hornsby.