[Peetwo]

UP debate on amending the Act and cleaning out CASA?

In follow up to the above Biskin communiqué for the bollocks Adelaide Board meeting, I cribbed the following discourse off the UP...

Sunfish

Related to the SoE is the account of the Board meeting:

https://www.casa.gov.au/about-us/who-we-...april-2022

While this document sounds like a refined afternoon tea party, I hope that there was more to it than that.

While it has been pointed out that the CASA Board is not a "real" Board in the sense of a public company Board, I would like to think it takes its duties just as seriously.

That means that no matter how politely it is done, the DAS's no doubt dainty feet are held to the blow torch.

The Board should be asking penetrating questions and expecting concise answers as to the subject of managing risk - which is the Boards duty.. If over time, the answers provided by the DAS do not suggest an appreciation of this little matter, then the Board should be looking for a new DAS.

Questions that I would be asking:

Considering the question of CASA's reputation and occasional adverse findings, how do you propose to manage it? Could you perhaps comment on the matter of Buckley and similar events as examples of reputational risk?

While this is a Board matter, Considering Government policy in toto, how should CASA support it? is our policy aligned with Government objectives? Are there any changes to The Act or policies you would recommend? Why?

Do you have sufficient resources to execute the approved business plan?

Are there any matters not mentioned in the minutes that we, as Board, should be aware of?

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Lead Balloon

I like it how you are able to swing from realistic sceptic to wide-eyed Pollyanna with little effort, Sunfish. "I hope." "I would like to think."

CASA isn't a company trying to make a profit. CASA doesn't exist for or to help the aviation industry. CASA exists to save the public from the aviation industry. CASA couldn't care less about its reputation in the aviation industry, other than to pay lip service.

Why on Earth would any member of the CASA Board want to make stressful or embarrassing work out of Board meetings? Mutual back-slapping is far more relaxing.

Are you able to identify a single Commonwealth statutory authority where the Board has sacked the CEO? Ever in history.

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Sunfish

Lead Balloon, Pollyanna indeed! More like Aunty Jack with Blundstones.

I was being perlite as I were dragged up to be.

A good board may contain characters who call a spade a spade. It may also contain members who hand you your head on a plate before you even realize its been cut off.

As I said " I would like to think" out of respect for the Board, it's Chairman and members, because its not an easy job, despite what you may think.

Sacked Commonwealth Authority CEO's? Of course not. CEO's "resigned to pursue other opportunities" ? That is a different matter.

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Lead Balloon

I've have been on a few boards. I'm on one now. And I do have some first-hand insights into the way in which the boards of Commonwealth statutory authorities work.

Can you nominate any CEO of any Commonwealth statutory authority who's ever "resigned to pursue other opportunities". Mark Skidmore bailed out early, not because of any pressure put on him to jump by the CASA Board or Minister, but rather because he quickly worked out what a sh*t show he'd inherited and that sacrificing his sanity and reputation weren't worth the pieces of silver.

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Arm out the window

but rather because he quickly worked out what a sh*t show he'd inherited and that sacrificing his sanity and reputation weren't worth the pieces of silver.

That's very disappointing, if true. If the CEO can't fix it, and the board and senate and minister can't fix it, who the hell can?

It would have been a great opportunity for someone with some direct aviation knowledge to open the can of worms, suss out who the real roadblocks were/are, and make a few big decisions. I would have thought that would be an excellent reputation enhancer!. Much better to be known as the bloke who saw a big problem in a government agency and got stuck into it, rather than put the rock back down and walked away.

Possibly not that simple, but future job prospects or financial worries wouldn't have been an issue surely.

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Lead Balloon

Give Skates a ring and ask him.

To ‘fix’ CASA, the legislation has to be fixed. That starts with the Civil Aviation Act. Neither the Board nor the CEO has any power to change the Act.

You might have heard reference to the ‘Iron Ring’ as if it’s a bunch of people. The ‘Iron Ring’ is, in fact, the Civil Aviation Act and all of the legislation that says what CASA’s job is and how it is to be done. Unless and until that changes, CASA will continue creating endless complexity. It keeps getting paid hundreds of millions of dollars every year to do it.

(There are plenty of people in CASA ready and willing to apply the Iron Ring to newbie CEOs and Chairman of the CASA Board. I call it the ‘straightjacket’ rather than the Iron Ring, because the former is an allusion to a lunatic asylum and that’s more apt.)

The Parliament can fix it. The Parliament created CASA and the Parliament decides what CASA’s powers and functions are, and the way in which they are to be exercised and performed. That’s one of the primary points of the Civil Aviation Act.

The Minister isn’t the Parliament, but the Minister can introduce legislation to amend the Civil Aviation Act, as can Senators. So far, those amendments have changed little in substance. That (along with the hundreds of millions each year) tells CASA that so far as the Parliament is concerned, CASA’s doing a great job.

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Arm out the window

Give Skates a ring and ask him.

I had bit to do with him in RAAF days and respected him. I don't have his contact details but would like to talk to him about it at some point.

I don't agree that the overarching legislation is where the core problem lies. I think different middle and senior managers working with honest good intentions could, and should have, at numerous times over the past twenty plus years of reg 'development', put a stop to over-complication and drawn-out talk fests by moving some self-serving empire builders out of their positions of influence and making ease of comprehension and application to real-world situations a requirement for any rules or policy output.

The buck-passing just keeps going on. What we need is:

1. Operator-level rules that are clear, concise and appropriate - sounds familiar, doesn't it. What we have is a barely comprehensible cluster. The more wishy-washy a rule is, the more it's open to interpretation. Who interprets? A 'guidance centre', which is just a smokescreen for the opinion of the flight and airworthiness standards person who gets the question on the day, or inspectors either assessing or auditing, who are probably just as confused as industry.

2. Less bureacratic top-heaviness and white noise, more focus and understanding on what it's like to be running or working in an aviation business, or flying a private aircraft, and genuine determination to help aviation thrive. Of course this ties in with a stripped-down, clear rule set, so everyone knows what they're supposed to be doing and the well-intentioned majority can get on with it, while the less scrupulous won't have as much cover to duck and weave.

I reckon, and this is of course just me shooting my mouth off on the internet, any simple reg set from the ones commonly quoted could be adopted and be better than what we have now. Their would be some initial pain and and angst about legal matters under the Australian legal system, but it would still be better than the current debacle. Right now, most operators are probably not compliant with the CASRs, because nobody really knows what the CASRs actually mean. There's also a Clayton's transition period of a couple of years when the regs are already in legal effect, so good luck taking anything to court at the moment - who's going to know what the law actually means?

Anyway, rant over for the moment.

Hmm...I do believe that LB and AOTW are both right but also there needs to be a top down clean out by a CEO tasked by a Minister committed to fundamentally reforming the regulator...      

MTF...P2