Margaret Howes, Empire Vale
Ballina Airport Tender No.778 is currently advertised on Council’s website. It appears to be about seeking consultants to advise Council how to lease Ballina Airport.
A normal investor or business operator would put an ad in the paper for expressions of interest and they would already have an idea of what they were seeking. But not our Council! A Council which seems to be totally overloaded with extremely highly paid staff and under qualified elected delegates and a combined directional ability to fleece as much money as it can out of us ratepayers.
Every morning I experience the whine of JetStar flying overhead my home on its way to land at Ballina Airport. I know this is just the beginning of the noise problem if the Council leases the airport. Afterall, it would be leased on the basis of being a money maker and that means increasing aviation activity.
The Gold Coast airport is loaded with flying schools training overseas students, and a scheduled passenger jet landing or taking off every five minutes. The people in the flight path near that airport are already in organised lobby groups to stop the noise which is affecting their lifestyle and general wellbeing.
Ballina has already got the parachute planes droning their way up to 14,000ft, as the Gold Coast doesn’t want them. What does Ballina get out of this? The parachute plane operators have such tight control over their participants. They bring their clients down from the Gold Coast in a stretch limo, drop them at the airport, the jumpers get in a plane and when it reaches 14,000ft they jump out and land at Kingsford Smith Oval. From there on it is back to the Gold Coast in another stretch limo sipping bottle after bottle of champagne and not a cent spent in Ballina.
It seems like only yesterday that Ballina’s most notorious developer invaded the local property market and left owing about $50 million to the local banks and mortgage trusts. Before that, Ballina was a sleepy little coastal village with a lot less aviation activity. We all had to go to the Gold Coast Airport if we wanted to fly further afield than Sydney. We love the convenience of having Melbourne and other cities close at hand, but do we want the related noise intrusion that goes with leasing and expanding our airport? Can’t we be content with what we’ve got and leave it at that?
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
