Kingscote Airport Business Case Appendices - Kangaroo Island ...

Kangaroo Island Futures Authority Draft Economic Impact of Agriculture and Tourism7. PATHWAYS TO GROWTH7.1 TourismA number of milestone developments were identified during the desk top study of policyalignment and subsequently supported by consultation with key stakeholders (Appendix 5).These included:1. Upgrade of Kingscote Airport2. Development of tourism experiences and accommodation3. Upgrade to utilities such as power and water supply4. Maintenance and development of road and trail infrastructure5. Development of export infrastructure such as bulk handling facilities6. Development of value adding infrastructure such as processing of agricultureproductsEssentially the growth potential in the tourism and agricultural sectors was seen to span theshort, middle and longer terms. Short-term growth at trend and higher was seen to be possibleutilising spare infrastructure and service capacity in the economy. However, to extend thisgrowth beyond the short-term, significant investment was required in milestonedevelopments.A feature of this development was likely to be a ‘leaking’ of benefits of this direct investmentfrom the Kangaroo Island economy to the broader regional economy. This was a product of thenarrow economy being unable to support major construction and the need for products andservices outside the scope of the existing industry profile on the Island. Therefore a measure ofthe direct investment in conventional terms (i.e. impact on GRP and jobs) was likely to berelatively small. The real benefits to the Kangaroo Island economy however should be seen asthe cumulative effect of the direct investment in the milestone development plus the benefitsthat accrue from the growth in key industry sectors such as tourism and agriculture. In otherwords, it is unlikely that growth in these sectors will occur at significant levels beyond theshort-term without a timely investment in milestone development.The example of investment in the Kingscote Airport upgrade is provided below. A similartreatment could be applied to the other milestone investments listed above. Some of theseinvestments are contingent on one another. For example, significant barriers to growth wouldremain if access to Kangaroo Island was improved at peak times without a facilitating upgradeto the power and water supply.7.1.1 Kingscote Airport upgradeTonkin Consulting prepared a report on the engineering investigations that were undertakento estimate the infrastructure requirements and associated capital costs to upgrade theKingscote Airport for four development scenarios (Tonkin Consulting 2012). The capital costsand on-going operating and maintenance costs for the upgrade options were utilised in thise c o n s e a r c hPage| 25