When Ascot capital took over the Jandakot lease they hired a firm called "Arid consultants" whose job it was to spread the word what a great idea it was to "move" Jandakot down to North Dandalup and convince the "stakeholders".
These people were silly enough to start their pitch with the Jandakot tenants so we were all offside straight away with their silly talk about how the A380 would mean we couldn't operate at the Jandakot site etc etc and their total lack of knowledge about aviation, The Airports Act or the head lease. Things that we, as part of a consortium who had bid for the lease, were very familiar with. They also ruffled a lot of feathers amongst the rural and horsey folk in North Dandalup, one of whom started a very vocal action group called FLORA. All their "community meetings" were pretty much sabotaged by hecklers.
Some of us were able to find out pretty easily that these Arid people were also big noises in the WA Nationals. We got hold of Brendan Grylls' mobile number and he must have got pretty sick of some of the repetitive phone calls he got.
particularly what this would do to the RFDS.
The state and federal (Carmen Lawrence) Labor MPs were pretty quiet about it all apart from Allanah McTiernan who was then WA Minister for Transport and didn't support the idea. It was Judith Adams (RIP) and Don Randall from the Federal Libs and Tony Simpson from the WA Libs who were on the tenants' side. So I doubt they were getting any donations.