There's some great stuff on the airport issues on the Sydney Daily Telegraph, and has been on Plane Talking earlier on too.
I'm surprised how little people bother to look up on this. Badgery's Creek is owned by the Feds. It is an airport that would cost taxpayers nothing because if it gets built it first gets sold to whoever is going to build it. It's free, and it's needed.
The airport line is already being extended to Leppington with a huge rail overpass at Glenfields today. There is a bloody great big two track permanent way being built just across the norhern edges of the golf course near Campbelltown. Yet people kept saying it will cost taxpayers money.
What's happening is that tax payer money is being spent big time now on what will double as access improvements for Badgerys Creek, but what happens on the site is going to be paid for by Mac Bank or someone like that.
Leppington isn't far from where you would put a terminal at Badgery's Creek. The east hills line and the line between Glenfields the main western line near Lidcombe are being duplicated to four tracks now. Sandilands says this is evidence that the public servants have taken matters into their own hands under the guise of improving existing trunk routes for City Rail and freight users. I looked up some of the photos on rail sites and Googling Glenfields and this is a huge amount of engineering going on, so I think he might be right.
I looked up the papers on this. If Sydney Airport refuses its first right of refusal to build on the site, it can be sold to whoever will pay the biggest number of billions to screw the public and the airlines in the future, just like Sydney Airport today. Except that there will be some competition between the airports.
If Albanese had a pair he'd just go ahead and say the airport site is available for X billion bucks to whoever wants to build it.