Saving Warnervale Airport

For more than 25 years, Warnervale Airport on the Central Coast was held back by a single piece of state legislation. The Warnervale Airport (Restrictions) Act 1996, known as the WAR Act, capped the number of daily take-offs and landings and restricted the length of the runway. There was only enough capacity for the Aero Club's training aircraft, so other aircraft couldn't visit the region, and general aviation and the businesses that grow around it couldn't get off the ground.

Your Central Coast Airport Association (YCCA) formed to change that. The community group wanted Warnervale developed as a general aviation business hub, bringing jobs, training and investment to a region with high youth unemployment. It launched the Save Warnervale Airport campaign to have the WAR Act repealed.

Poli PR has worked with YCCA since 2019. We created the group's branding and logo and its website, ycca.org.au, turning a local cause into a credible, professional voice with one place to make the case for the airport, explain the WAR Act and share campaign news.

When the NSW Government put the WAR Act under review, with submissions closing on 28 February 2020, we ran the Stop the WAR campaign. The message was blunt: W.A.R. is killing our Central Coast economy. Flyers, advertising and media releases showed what repeal would bring, from 137 aviation businesses interested in moving to a Warnervale General Aviation Hub to an estimated 7,000 new jobs and $600 million for the Central Coast, all with no large airline jets. A lead generation landing page, stopthewar.com.au, gave supporters a quick way to back repeal and have their say in the review.

The campaign brought pilots, local businesses and residents together and packed the public gallery at Central Coast Council. Aviator and entrepreneur Dick Smith joined the campaign, adding one of the country's best-known voices to the call for repeal.

More than 75% of community submissions to the review supported repeal. In July 2020 the NSW Government announced the WAR Act would go, after the review found it overly complex, hard to administer and a safety risk. The repeal bill passed the NSW Parliament in February 2021, lifting the flight cap straight away. The rest of the Act was repealed in stages, and the last of the restrictions were removed in February 2024.