So why doesn't that logic apply to all hospitals, all schools, the defence force, the police forces, ambulance services...
But it does. All fiscal black holes, whether federal or state, and all struggling to maintain services (or being stealth privatised in the case of health and education) in the face of reducing budgets and spiralling costs.
The community can see the value of an airport, but only to a point. Most councils maintain their regional strips even though loss making, because they understand the need it fulfills, but they try to minimise those losses. In a city though, the vast majority of people have come to terms with airports as businesses, if they ever thought of them as anything else anyway. They understand, accept and want a Tullamarine, but they probably can't see a need for an Essendon just down the road. So if a place like an Essendon or a Moorabbin is to survive in a sea of ratepayer self interest, it has to survive by other means.