cost of privatisation a contributor?
At an airport that lots of pollies fly into (and out of), about 10 or so years ago there used to be 6 or 7 companies / clubs offering flying lessons. There are now none - in a city of 350,000. Makes it just that bit more difficult to even get started.
I've posted before about people spreading the lie that there is no training in Canberra and it really gets me very annoyed. Canberra Aviation has been training out of Canberra Airport 7 days a week since February 2012. They employ 4 instructors (3 of them straight away from Brindabella) and train mostly with Piper Warriors but also have a 172XP and Cirrus online.
It started as a satellite base of Goulburn Aviation but they do considerably more training in Canberra due to the ridiculous costs and lack of facilities at Goulburn Airport.