Funding must be front and centre in debate on third runway
With HK$200b at stake, it is absurd to separate cost from any decision on a project that would clog our airport with subsidised minor airlines
“Other questions remain over the runway – not least how it will be funded”
City, September 3
It may not be the least of these questions, but it certainly was the last in our report of how government environmental advisers now seem ready to approve construction of a third runway at Chek Lap Kok.
I have said it before and I shall say it again. In this debate, the white dolphin is a red herring, a cynical ploy by airport and airline lobbyists for the third runway to divert the debate to an area of contention where they know they can win.
I do not dismiss white dolphins. My daughter worked for a period as an organiser of boat tours to see them on the north Lantau shoreline. I went on the tour once and was delighted to watch their frolics.
But the lobbyists always knew that they would eventually offer some concession, such as the tiny marine park they now propose, and the government's environmental advisers could then honourably accept defeat and walk away, as it appears they now have done.
Having been happy to see white dolphins made the centre of opposition and having seen this opposition vanish on schedule, the lobbyists reasoned that the runway would be certain to go ahead. Events are now falling right in line with that game plan.
As a fall-back ploy, however, they also came up with the stratagem of saying that we must first decide whether we need a third runway and only then discuss the funding of it.
It is somewhat akin to my saying that I must first decide whether I really need a Ferrari and only then look at how I will raise the money for it.
It's a great idea if I can then say that I can't afford it and someone else must pay, as the lobbyists think they can make taxpayers pay for the third runway. The purchase has been irreversibly determined - too bad for the taxpayer, too bad for the people who must pay for my Ferrari.
And if the lobbyists say the comparison is inapt, as I don't really need a Ferrari, well, neither did they need to clog our runways by subsidising minor airlines to operate small aircraft to minor mainland towns in competition with Shenzhen. Their cynicism extends to misuse of the facilities we bought for them.
The fact is that we immediately take into account the cost of anything we want to buy in the decision of whether to buy it or not, and when that cost is HK$200 billion, as in the latest projections for the third runway, it is rank negligence to separate the cost from the purchase decision.
Think about it. Recently our government rejected (but has not yet admitted doing so) a scheme to pay everyone over the age of 65 a pension of HK$3,000 a month. I myself thought it a poorly considered scheme, but I accept that old-age poverty is a problem.
Now let us assume that we put HK$200 billion into an old-age investment fund and target a return of 2 per cent a year, which is not high in ordinary times.
This would yield HK$4 billion a year, enough to pay 111,000 old people that pension of HK$3,000 a month, and we could keep doing it year after year without touching the capital. It would go a long way towards addressing the needs of our indigent elderly.
Should we do it? Would it make more sense for use of the money than building a third runway so that our airport can keep competing with Shenzhen in microlight traffic?
I accept no answer from the third-runway lobbyists. Their only stance can be that we must first decide whether to pay 111,000 people HK$3,000 a month and only then discuss how we would fund the scheme.
There is only one way to do things here. It is to fold a share of the cost of that runway into the airfare of every air traveller who uses our airport. Any investment banker can tell the lobbyists how to do it. But they won't. People would then go to Shenzhen for microlight flights, and our two runways would be enough again.