I’m the sixth generation stemming from Yarramundi, who was chief of the Boorooberongal clan at the time of colonisation. He resided in the Richmond area, not far from here. Dharug country stretches from Bondi to Blackheath, Palm Beach to Picton, Colo to Camden, Campbelltown and up the Burragorang Valley. I’d like to warmly welcome you all here today and to pay our respects to the land that we stand upon across this vast continent of Australia. And here on Dharug land, we acknowledge all these descendants as guardians of the earth and of all things that are reproduced and grow from these rich soils and as trustees of the waterways and of the rich and vast variety of life that stems from such waters. We thank these ancient guardians for passing on their heritage and their culture that they have maintained since the Dreaming began in the dawns of time, and whose love of this great land has made this a true place of beauty and one that we all treasure to this very day. I especially and humbly pay my respects to the elders of this great nation, both past and present, who are connected to this bountiful and magnificent land, its waters and its skies. Acknowledge and respect the enduring culture and the contributions they have made and continue to make to the life of this proud country and all the surrounding regions. I would also like to acknowledge and welcome other Aboriginal people from other nations who may be with us here today, as do I acknowledge my own and your ancestors and the diverse places where they were born and have journeyed to and from in their past lives. Ladies and gentlemen, while you’re here in Dharug country, may the good spirit Baiame watch over you from the high country and take you all safely on your journeys home to family and loved ones at the end of each and every day. I leave you in peace and harmony. Yanama Budyari Gumada, walk in good spirits. Thank you, Yanu.
ANNE STANLEY, MEMBER FOR WERRIWA: Good morning everyone, and welcome to this fantastic announcement this morning. Can I welcome you to Dharug Country and thank Uncle Colin so much for his warm welcome. Also pay my respects to the elders that gave us this land and cared for it over time. It is my absolute pleasure to have you here for this important announcement, and you can see how far the airport has come. We have a terminal building that is being fitted out inside and this is what is going to make Werriwa and this part of the world just so wonderful. The jobs that will come are fantastic. And it is my pleasure to announce that the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, will talk to us now and give us some more wonderful information about this area.
ANTHONY ALBANESE, PRIME MINISTER: Well, thanks very much, Anne. And I thank Uncle Colin as well for the welcome to this wonderful part of our great country. Well, this is an exciting day because Western Sydney International Airport is ready for takeoff. Western Sydney International Airport will drive jobs and the economy here in Western Sydney. If you want a catalyst for investment, build an airport. And that’s precisely what this is doing. This isn’t just a runway, this is a catalyst for job creation, for businesses to be based here in Western Sydney, which will have a population which will grow to 3 million people. That is an enormous market, and Singapore Airlines is recognising the opportunity that investing here will bring them. Because by having Singapore Airlines as the first international airline to commit from overseas to use this airport, what it will do is give direct access into all those markets that Singapore Airlines flies to in that wonderful hub that is there at Changi Airport. The wonderful hub that will provide people in Western Sydney with access throughout the Asian market, into Europe, into North America, into all of those areas as well, where the diaspora in this vast multicultural community here in Western Sydney engages. This investment will connect Badgerys Creek to Marina Bay. It will connect Western Sydney with the world and it will boost jobs, investment and opportunities right here in Western Sydney. Together with the Moorebank Intermodal just down the road here, what we’re seeing is for the first time, Sydney, rather than looking inward to the East, towards the CBD and towards the Harbour, looking west to where most Sydneysiders live. And that is why this is such an important piece of infrastructure. The rail connections here will make a difference. The road connections mean between them, some $17 billion of investment is taking place from my government right now, right around here in partnership with the NSW Government. This is a vote of confidence in this airport. I’ve certainly seen the plans for the airport. It’s going to be the best airport in Australia in terms of modern infrastructure, in terms of the way that baggage handling occurs, the smooth transitions through the terminal. Because it is a new airport, it’s using up to date technology that will help to drive productivity at this site. The construction is now close to 85 per cent complete, as you can see. There’s been more than 9000 jobs created here already, with construction with more to come. But the important thing about this and the Aerotropolis is that it will mean job creation on a permanent basis for Western Sydney. In addition to that, there’s been in the order of half a billion dollars of contracts for Western Sydney small and medium businesses as a result of this investment – making an enormous difference. We are contributing $5.2 billion towards the Sydney Metro, Sydney Western Sydney Airport Project and we’ve seen the Sydney Metro, the first part of it opened just in the last week with an enormous success. And $1.6 billion towards the toll free M12 Motorway. This is an example of this investment. But I do thank our friends in Singapore, Australia has a great relationship with Singapore and it’s wonderful that Singapore Airlines, one of the world’s best, is the first international airline to choose Western Sydney Airport as one of the bases that it comes to here in Western Sydney. I’ll ask Catherine King to make some comments and we’ve got a couple more, then we’ll take some questions.
CATHERINE KING, MINISTER FOR INFRASTRUCTURE, TRANSPORT, REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT: Lovely, thank you. Thanks very much, Prime Minister. And what a fantastic day to be here at Western Sydney International Airport, and can I congratulate all who’s been involved in this announcement today. We obviously had the first domestic airline in Qantas announcing that back a while ago now, and now to have the first international airline saying that it is coming here to Western Sydney International Airport is really saying this airport is getting well and truly ready for takeoff. When I met with the Singaporean Transport Minister, he was very interested, very interested in what we were doing out here in Western Sydney International Airport. And I’m delighted that Singapore Airlines will be the first international carrier out here. 10 million passengers – this is what this airport capacity is going to be. And the fact that Singapore has got such a great vote of confidence in this airport is really telling. We also know 85 per cent complete, ready for operations at the end of 2026 are on track to do that. The infrastructure in place and the commissioning will start soon of this actual airport. I do want to say to Western Sydney International Airport and the workers who have been involved in this, you’ve done a terrific job. We’ve seen thousands and thousands of workers through the construction phase, but also local businesses here in Western Sydney benefiting those jobs already here now, but more and more jobs to come. It is very much a great economic development opportunity for the people of Western Sydney as we look to the west.
SIMON HICKEY, WESTERN SYDNEY INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER: What a terrific day for Western Sydney International Airport with news of our very first international airline, premium five star carrier, Singapore Airlines. This really puts our airport on the map and demonstrates the strength of our offering, especially given the unprecedented opportunities our 24/7 capability unlocks. This partnership will help connect Australia’s third largest economy with one of the biggest transportation hubs in Asia. In just over two years’ time, this airport will be welcoming planes and passengers. It will boost tourism, support more jobs, and connect Australians to the world in new ways. Soon, people will be able to board a plane from WSI and transit via the Changi hub to destinations in Asia, Oceania, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and North America. And our 24 hour capability will make it easier for Sydneysiders to access these global destinations, which equals less stress and travel time, and more time to enjoy your holiday. Our late night departure capacity could also allow Singapore Airlines business travellers to finish a full day’s work here in Sydney and take an overnight flight and arrive in Singapore before their first morning meeting the next day. We already know Sydney is a major market for Singapore Airlines. This new partnership will boost connectivity with more services for travellers in one of our nation’s fastest growing and most diverse regions, Western Sydney. I’ll now hand over to Arul from Singapore Airlines.
LOUIS ARUL, SINGAPORE AIRLINES REGIONAL VP: Good morning, everyone. Thank you very much, Prime Minister, Minister Catherine King and CEO of Western Sydney Airport, Simon Hickey. Western Sydney Airport marks a new chapter in growing Sydney’s global connectivity and Singapore Airlines is honoured to be a part of this journey. Sydney remains one of our most significant operations in Australia, with the largest passenger capacity among Singapore Airlines Australian destinations. Sydney has always been at the forefront of our plans in the past. When Singapore Airlines was the first to operate the a 380, we chose Sydney as the first destination for the a 380 aircraft. And Singapore Airlines was also the first airline to land at Sydney as soon as borders opened soon after Covid in November 2021. This new greenfield Airport presents a unique opportunity not only for Sydney to expand its global connectivity, but also for Singapore Airlines to establish new standards for customer service throughout an airport ecosystem. And this strategic partnership between Singapore Airlines and Western Sydney solidifies our commitment to working closely with the Western Sydney airport team to ensure that our customers will enjoy the comprehensive, end to end, world class experience that is synonymous with Singapore Airlines. So we very much look forward to working with the Western Sydney Airport team to develop our operational plans over the coming months. Thank you.
MARGY OSMOND, TRANSPORT TOURISM FORUM CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER: Good morning, everybody. What a great day for the Australian tourism industry. This is tremendous news that Singapore will now be flying out of WSA. Congratulations to Singapore and to the Airport, and to the winners who are going to be Australian travellers who will have this option. And it’s not just about the travelers, we will be seeing friends and relatives of international students coming into Western Sydney using this airport, business people and of course, the agricultural sector. Most people don’t realise just how much agricultural product will go out in the holds of these airplanes. So, wonderful news for all of those agricultural operators in the near vicinity. So across the board this is an investment in the future of the Australian tourism industry and it’s great news to see the prospect of this capacity into our future. Thank you all very much.
PRIME MINISTER: Thanks very much. We’re happy to take some questions.
JOURNALIST: How many airlines do you expect to be locked in before planes start flying? How are discussions going?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, Singapore’s won the prize for first. But I’m sure it’ll be the first of many because we know that under Australia’s aviation system, there’s four gateway airports. This is an airport that will be open for business and there is first mover advantage. So, congratulations to Qantas being first as a domestic airline. But Singapore Airlines being the first international airline to be first. I reckon Singapore Airlines is one of the world’s great success stories in aviation. It’s a tough market, aviation, but I can imagine that Singapore over the next couple of years will be already marketing out there, because that’s what the smart Singaporeans do around the world. So I would expect that there will be others to come there, obviously commercial arrangements, but this airport represents an incredible opportunity.
JOURNALIST: How many Singapore Airlines flights per week are we expected to see?
ARUL: We are still in discussions with Western Sydney Airport. It is two years away, two and a half years away, so it’s a bit early for us to nail down an operation.
JOURNALIST: On the topic of construction, thousands of construction workers are walking off the job today in support of the CFMEU. What’s your message to them?
PRIME MINISTER: My message is that the CFMEU have been placed in administration. We respect the work that construction workers do. It’s a tough job, and they do magnificent work, including here at this wonderful airport. What we want to do, though, is to make sure that their union is free of corruption. That is in the interests of all trade unionists. Trade unions do a great job defending occupational health and safety, campaigning for better wages and conditions for their members. What they shouldn’t be engaged in is the sort of activity that John Setka and others have been.
JOURNALIST: Did you make a deal with John Setka for him to step down? Your Government?
PRIME MINISTER: Obviously not.
JOURNALIST: So is he a liar then?
PRIME MINISTER: Obviously we didn’t make a deal. The evidence is in what’s happened. I think John Setka apparently spoke the other night, bizarrely, I’m not quite sure why people gave him some more oxygen. But John Setka is someone who will always look for publicity. He’s someone who I’ve had one very brief conversation with in my entire life. He’s someone who, though, I expelled from the Labor Party because his values aren’t the same values as the Labor Party, and they’re certainly not the values of the overwhelming majority of the trade union movement in Australia.
JOURNALIST: Mr. Albanese, on the topic of jobs, will you release all the advice on which Tanya Plibersek relied on her decision to block the $1 billion McPhillamys gold mine, and do you share Chris Minns disappointment that this project has been vetoed?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, the premise of the question is completely wrong. As you know, the gold mine can go ahead. What has happened is a decision based upon a tailings dam. Chris Minns, would like it to go ahead, I’d like it to go ahead too. There’s nothing to stop it. There are other options that the company put forward on the tailings dam.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, did Jim Chalmers go too far in calling Peter Dutton the most divisive leader in modern history?
PRIME MINISTER: Peter Dutton has promoted division his entire political career. He always looks for what will divide Australians rather than what will bring Australians together. And in the last short period of time, just in the last 24 hours, we’ve seen examples of that with Angus Taylor announcing $100 billion of cuts on the agenda from the coalition government. It’s up to the Coalition to announce where those $100 billion of cuts will be. We know that Peter Dutton, unlike what will happen at this airport, he’ll be a reverse thrust on the economy. He will stifle the economy. He will, has policies, nuclear power where now without any costings, we’re going to see up to just 4 per cent of our power provided by state owned nuclear reactors sometime in the 2040s, but in the last 24 hours as well they’ve said, ‘Oh well, there’s bit of an issue with earthquakes in the Hunter, so we mightn’t be able to go ahead there’. We’ve seen policies of divestment, forced divestment of businesses. We see him constantly looking to divide Australians rather than bring them together. But he now has to come out today and say where the $100 billion of cuts will be. Will it be cuts to important infrastructure? Cuts to health and Medicare, like he implemented as the Health Minister in the Abbott Government? Cuts to education? Cuts to services? They talk about $315 billion of expenditure, that includes the indexation of pensions and payments to people. Will there be cuts to pensions? Will there be cuts to health services, transport services, infrastructure? They’re the answers that Peter Dutton has to answer, and he has to answer them today.
JOURNALIST: Do you agree that he’s dangerous though as Jim Chalmers said?
PRIME MINISTER: Well, Peter Dutton represents division, and he never has an answer that’s positive or constructive. Peter Dutton is yet to, after almost two and a half years as opposition leader, we’re now into the third year. He’s yet to announce a single fully costed policy. This compares with what I did as Labor Leader. We had policies that were costed – about energy policy, about health policy, we had the child care policy as well, fully costed out there for all to see. Peter Dutton just constantly is looking for the negative. And you can’t run an economy, you can’t actually take Australia forward by just being someone who’s opposed to everything and is constantly negative and relying upon fear campaigns.
JOURNALIST: Just back on the McPhillamys mine, if I may, Prime Minister. The tailings dam, finding a new place could take years said that it’ll put the project back. Is Tanya Plibersek trying to save her seat and her environmental credentials?
PRIME MINISTER: No, the mine has not been opposed. What we’re talking about is a Tailings Dam, and the company itself put forward a range of options that were considered. They should work to ensure the project can go ahead. They themselves had other options for the tailings dam.
JOURNALIST: Is the government prepared to work with this company to try and find options, work with them to get it through?
PRIME MINISTER: They found them. They’ve found them, and they identified them.
JOURNALIST: Can I ask Minister King a question please. Given what we’ve seen with Rex and the Aviation White Paper, how will that guarantee regional air services?
MINISTER KING: Well, obviously, the reforms that we announced back in February to slots, the demand management system at Sydney Airport, has a significant impact in terms of ensuring guaranteeing of regional slots. And as I said yesterday, I’ve also used a ministerial direction to ensure that those regional slots are still available through to next year. Rex, obviously being in voluntary administration at the moment, we’re working with the administrators, because we know how important regional airlines are, and that those services need to continue, and we’ll continue to work with the voluntary administrators as they go through that process because we want to see Qantas and Virgin continuing to fly regionally, as well as a regional airline dedicated to that service.
JOURNALIST: What’s been your interactions with other countries transport ministers and other airlines in terms of, are they excited about Western Sydney Airport? Do they know it’s happening?
MINISTER KING: I think they certainly know now with Singapore Airlines today being the first to make that commitment here. And if they didn’t know about it before, they’ll be paying attention. Now it’s an enormous opportunity. It’s an enormous opportunity to open up competition. It’s an enormous opportunity for the economy of Western Sydney. Singapore has been terrific having first cab off the rank. And of course, we have already announced increases in capacity for Turkey airlines, that has been a game changer coming out of Melbourne. We’d welcome them here, I know, at WSI. Vietnam Airlines, we’ve increased capacity there. I would think, in terms of the market here, it would be a very good place as well. And I’ve got other countries who are talking to me all the time as part of our bilateral negotiations in order to keep ahead of that capacity and that demand. And WSI obviously forms part of that.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, just circling back a little bit. Are you able to assure CFMEU workers that the forced administration won’t affect their right to unionise completely?
PRIME MINISTER: Look, the objective here is to get good proper trade unionism. You need to have unions in the building industry. It’s a dangerous industry. You can’t have a corrupt union official without having a corrupt employer paying the money – so there’s two sides to this coin. But what we want to do is to make sure that they have a union that’s worthy of the incredible work that construction workers do. Construction workers, I think, are quite rightly proud of their product, of their work. To be able to, the people who’ve worked on this building or on this tarmac, to be able to come here and to tell their kids and grandkids, ‘I did that’, is a great thing. But they need to also be just as proud of their union. And that is why the administrators have taken the strong action that they have, it has the support of the government and it has the support, overwhelmingly of people in the union movement who want to see unions do their job, which is looking after their members, looking after their wages and conditions. And in construction in particular, looking after occupational health and safety, because It can be a very dangerous job, and we respect that and understand that, which is why you do need to ensure that there are unions in the building industry.
JOURNALIST: Do you think the members should be banned from protesting?
PRIME MINISTER: Look, people, of course, if there is unprotected industrial action, then there are consequences for that. What I’d say is that the government is not for turning and nor is the Australian public. They want to see this industry cleaned up. They want to see good unions and good businesses getting on with their job on a day to day basis. And so the administrators are in place, they’re in place for some period of time, and I would say that that will leave an industry that is better off, and that is what we want to see.
JOURNALIST: Do you have any fears that this move puts Labor offside with the union movement more generally?
PRIME MINISTER: Overwhelmingly trade unionists know that their unions do a good job free of corruption, and they do a good job making sure that the wages and conditions of working people are looked after and that their occupational health and safety is looked after. Trade unions have made an enormous contribution to this nation. They will continue to do so, driven overwhelmingly by job delegates and people who essentially are volunteers in their union, who represent their workplaces and who give up their own time and effort to look after their fellow workers. That’s a good thing.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, in 1996 in your maiden speech to Parliament, you said about the third opening runway at Kingsford Smith that, ‘There is no evidence that the rich have better, as opposed to more sensitive hearing’. If that is correct, why the people of Western expected to rate 24/7 air traffic with no legislative flight caps,
PRIME MINISTER: This airport will operate in the same way that most airports around Australia operate. There are curfews at Kingsford Smith, at Gold Coast, at Essendon, and they operate on a restricted basis. Here the great benefit is that these runways as well point out towards where there aren’t vast populations, the southwest. That is one of the advantages that this airport has here. And so it will operate in the same way that other airports operate right around Australia and around the world, and will bring jobs and economic activity here in Western Sydney, and will lead to a growth in wealth in Western Sydney. Thank you.
