Now that's an airport...

[Peter Ward]

Australia's airports are a joke. After a recent extended layover in Hong Kong, I took the attached happy snap of Chek lap kok airport. Like Singapore's Changi... no banal separation of arriving/departing passengers, as is the case in planet Oz.. it just works.

Now that an election has been called it's safe to assume politicians are lying to their back teeth, with one of the more laughable promises being: a second Sydney Airport

Given that endless and costly "studies", plus debate has been going on for about 40 years (FYI Chek Lap was built from scratch in about 8) I think it safe to assume no world-class airport to be built in Sydney anytime soon.

[Larryp (Laurie)]

Too many nimbies in this country to get ANYTHING done, Peter

[hotspur (Chris)]

That is great to see,very interesting.

We certainly have poor infrastructure management in Australia.I remember some old timer,years ago telling me,after the war (II) the yanks had heaps of gear here from building airstrips etc in the pacific,and were basically waiting to get back to their home.They offered the Australian government at the time-to build a six lane highway-three lanes each way,from Melbourne to Brisbane for $1 million.The Australian Governments' reply was-why? We would never 'need' such a thing.The yanks promptly put all the machinery etc in boats,of the east coast and sunk the lot.We really have had poor management in the country-and now this election,what a waste of time-they should say no more,and give some business person like Dick Smith or Clive Berghoffer a go for five years,somebody-any body that has proper planning skills.

[Peter Ward]

Originally Posted by Hans Tucker

Then by all means gentlemen go live in Singapore or Hong Kong or the like.

Peter, Have you written to anyone in government or to your local member to express your views? What have you done to highlight the issue, since it seems very important to you, to the relevant government bodies?

I have written to my local member. In fact she asked me to write a tad more, the content of which is now in Hansard. As for emigration.... gotta say, nanny-state-oz has been getting to me of late.

This however does not change the fact: our airports suck.

[leon]

You are right Peter, as you would know Brisbane is a nightmare, when flying out of Darwin we were told that we would be delayed because we could not get into Brisbane at the scheduled time.

Then when we approached Brisbane we had to fly around in circles a wait for a space, so to speak.

Leon

[pgc hunter]

Infrastructure planning in Australia is a hopeless dogs breakfast at the best of times. The piece-meal way things are constructed and this ridiculous method of drip-feeding funding budget-to-budget is a joke. Classic example of this are roads, building a few dozen km of highway takes decades because it costs a billion $$$ to build 5km of 4 lane road, freeways and highways needing expansion after 5-10 years because they were poorly built to save money and ofcourse the obligatory bakers dozen of multi-million dollar environmental studies into proposed projects that will be lucky to see the light of day in our lifetime. Ofcourse, then there are landmark proposals, such as the 388m tower that was proposed in Melbourne earlier this year, that are invariably canned because of a few stupid nimbys (often the deadbeat latte-sipping inner city councils more than anyone else) or some childish squabble between the parties concerned.

[04Stefan07 (Stefan)]

I could stare at this picture all day. That airport looks fantastic! What a sight within those mountains, ey .

[UniPol]

Well, that's just the way it is.