Council admits four airport documents never made public

Central Coast Council has admitted it has four documents about projected costs for Warnervale Airport that have never been made public.

At first council denied it had “records” that could be retrievable, but later said it did hold the information.

The admission comes after a resident requested information about the projected costs and expected revenue that Council gave the consultants who wrote the airport’s masterplan.

The resident insisted the information must exist for the consultants to have made their financial projections.

When Council rejected the resident’s Government Information Public Access (GIPA) request, the resident asked the Information and Privacy Commission (IPC) to investigate.

The IPC said that Council admitted it had ten documents, six which were on the public record and that Council stated that it was not in the public interest to release the other four documents.

The IPC recommended that Council should reconsider its position by October 27.

The IPC said that while council argued against disclosure, council was required to undertake a proper public interest determination on this information “which requires more than a cursory consideration”.

“The (council) must then provide reasons in its notice of decision which meet the requirements of section 61 of the GIPA Act,” the IPC said.

“As there is additional information held by the (council), I cannot be satisfied that the (council’s) decision that it does not hold further information within scope of the access application, is justified.”

The applicant wanted to see the financial information Council gave the independent consultants as the input data to the consultants’ financial modelling for Warnervale Airport.

“The reliability of the result depends as much on the information provided by Council as the model developed by the consultant,” the resident told the IPC.

 

The applicant also asked the IPC to challenge Council on a note in the masterplan that some costs had been excluded.

“My question simply asked why the “excluded costs” of the project as set out in annex D of the Masterplan had been excluded, and what would be the impact on the project bottom line if they were included,” the applicant asked.

“Why won’t Council answer that simple question.”

He said Council had a financial responsibility to understand why these costs were excluded, because if it turns out they were wrongly excluded, there would be overspends on budgets.

“I do not accept therefore that Council does not know why these costs were excluded or the financial value of those costs,” he said.

On this item, the IPC said the applicant was requesting an answer from council rather than asking for a specific record of information.

“There is no information or evidence before me which would tend to prove that the information is held by the (council),” the IPC said.

 

The airport masterplan was adopted by Council at its first meeting of 2025 on a councillor vote of 8-7 with Team Central Coast and the Liberals counted in the eight and Labor and two independents making up the 7.

The motion included agreement that no rate payer funds be expended without Council approval towards capital projects identified in the masterplan.

It noted that this would have; no impact on current users or operators and that investment required from the current masterplan was not currently identified in the long term financial plan or the current operational plan or future operational plan and that the adoption of the document resulted in significant funds that were not currently identified in financial plans.

 

The motion also called for:

A reading of the June meeting minutes shows no sign of that report having been tabled.

 

Also a briefing or workshop was to be held on the implication of rescinding all the previous motions identified in the adopted motion.

 

The masterplan’s draft business case states that the airport would see 10 to 14 years of cumulative deficits before the accumulated cash flows from aviation activities and commercial ground leases turned positive.

The airport began operations in 1972 and is restricted with the size of aircraft that can use it.