How chook farm spurred Paul Keating’s push for new airport at Badgerys Creek

The decades-long history of Sydney inching towards building a second major airport is littered with backflips, delays and politicians running a mile from the high-wire act of selecting a site.

Yet, a decision that boosted the odds of it eventually happening was the Hawke government’s compulsory acquisition of 1780 hectares of farmland on the city’s western fringe in the late 1980s.

Ahead of the Western Sydney International Airport opening to passengers on Sunday, former Labor prime minister Paul Keating recalls how a chook farm played a part in helping Sydney realise the new $6 billion aviation hub.

He traces the journey towards securing land for the airport back to a Labor Party branch secretary in Georges Hall selling his house in the late 1970s and deciding to buy acreage in Sydney’s outer west.

After being invited repeatedly, he travelled to visit the Labor loyalist in 1979 at the new farm his family had ended up purchasing at Luddenham, near the foothills of the Blue Mountains.

“When I go, I discover the biggest chunk of flat land in Sydney I’ve ever seen,” Keating said. “So I said to Reg, ‘God, you’ve struck gold here’. It was unique in Sydney.”

Keating said he never thought any more about it until about five years later when he was the federal treasurer.

In 1985, Keating said then-federal transport and aviation minister Peter Morris put forward a proposal to look at two airport sites: one at Galston near Hornsby and the other at Badgerys Creek near Luddenham.

“I had been to both, and I knew that the Badgerys Creek site was way superior to Galston,” he said this week.

“I wouldn’t have pricked my ears in a 1985 cabinet room at Peter Morris’ proposal for Badgerys Creek had I not gone out to see Reg’s chook farm.”

Morris’ initial proposal was deferred. But Keating said he encouraged Morris to return with a second proposal, which he did.

Keating steered that proposal through cabinet despite what he described as consternation from prime minister Bob Hawke and finance minister Peter Walsh, and allocated money to buy the Badgerys Creek site.

“I pulled rank inside the cabinet to get Badgerys bought,” he said.

In 1995, a year before losing office, the Keating government budgeted $762 million to fast-track construction of the main runway for the new airport. The following year, the incoming Howard government cancelled the spending for the airport but, crucially, retained the land at Badgerys Creek.

“I lobbied the Howard and Rudd governments not to sell it,” he said. “It was one thing not building the airport; it was another altogether of actually selling the land.”

Three decades later, Keating maintains that without the land purchase in the late 1980s, construction of a second airport would not have happened.

With passenger flights now about to start, he is confident that Western Sydney International will be a success due in part to its 24-hour status and the development of Parramatta.

“Badgerys is going to remake western Sydney,” he said. “It is another indication of Australia joining the world. The airport is an example of Australia’s internationalism now.”

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.