[Kharon]

Satire, slur, slander and systems.

Ow! My sides hurt, too much laughing will do that, every time. Birthday bash for one of the troops last evening and the uninvited guest was our old mate Wodger, who stole the show. It was an innocent enough remark which kicked off the hilarity; Blind Freddy asked an ATCO we know WTF happened at Sydney:-

BF – “WTD was that all about yesterday?” (casual and curious).

ATCO – “It could be said that we are Accelerating toward another Senate Inquiry”.

BF – “That makes sense, particularly after the last round of estimates”.

ATCO – “Nothing to do with estimates mate; the same fellah who ran the Pel-Air audits, made all the necessary happen, triggered an inquiry  and then investigated his own team is in charge again.

BF – (incredulous) Naw! Not Wodger! - Shirley?

ATCO – “Yup, the very same”.

What began as a quiet drink with an old mate turned into one the funniest comedy shows ever; if, as they say, ears burn when folk are talking about you is true, then there’ll be some very hot ones floating about this morning. As most of it was most definitely slander, I’ll not repeat any of it here, leaving it up to the imagination of the informed reader to fill in the blanks.

But on the serious side – can you imagine anyone, barring Halfwit and 6D (AGAD) being silly enough to allow the manager of the branch to investigate his own operation? Particularly ‘that’ manager. It has to be a joke; or, a get ducked message to the RRAT committee; brave call. Anyway FWIW we all thought it hilarious, can’t wait for the ‘report’. But the complete mess ASA is in is not so funny and ‘accelerate’ despite claims to the contrary is having an impact. Ask any one of the punters waiting to board an aircraft at Sydney their opinion of the claimed internal savings made.  We may well be accelerating – but toward what? Aye, tis true – if you’ve time to spare – travel by air.

Toot - toot.

[thorn bird]

Oh dead oh dear....talk about leaving yourself wide open!!

WODGER to ATCO: WADDA YA MEAN CRASHED??

ATCO: Sir the system crashed

WODGER: (thinks)..where's the skull when you need him.

WODGER: RIGHT YOU LOT, SHUT THEM DOWN, DON'T CARE HOW YOU DO IT, JUST SHUT THEM DOWN!

ATCO: But Sir we'd be shutting ourselves down, it was just a computer glitch.

WODGER: GLITCH...GLITCH!!! THAT'S NOT AN EXCUSE!! YOU SAID THEY CRASHED FOR CHRIST SAKE...NOBODY CRASHES ON MY WATCH (starting to foam at the mouth)....SHUT THEM DOWN I SAID!!

ATCO: But Sir we'd need a reason to shut down ATC.Think of all the jobs that would be lost, think of all the money that would be lost, think of the punters, think of the country, we have no grounds to shut us down

WODGER: (thinks) God where's a worthless and a Dubious when you need them

WODGER TO ATCO: LISTEN YOU SILLY LITTLE LACKY YOU...I SAID THEY CRASHED...CRASHING IS ALL THE CAUSE YOU NEED....MAKE IT UP YOU FOOL, JUST MAKE IT UP (thinks) wonder if Worthless and Dubious would shift camp?

[P7_TOM]

Two minutes in the sin bin for TB.

Naughty TB; bad, bad, bad! How dare you impugn the spotless record of Dubious – as if he would ever follow his leader into the pit of gunpowder, treason and plot; why the man’s a pillar of aeronautical society – unless you count the odd document, signed under duress and recanting his ‘evidence’ – shame on you TB, shame.

The second minute is due to even daring to mention Inutile Lad; he of top-gun fame. A super-star sky god who firmly believes in many wondrous notions. A tower of integrity unfortunately, tarred with Wodger’s brush; a travesty his many admirers say.

No, no, the two minute ban applies and; if you argue, we will bar the wearing of lampshades at the BRB indaba.

Now, be a good chap and get ‘em in; yes , same again – do I look like a bloody camel?

[Peetwo]

Week of buckets, bollocks & trough top ups - Part II.

Quote from AGAD Chester's thread post #317:

..Airservices operates as a world leading air traffic control and aviation rescue and firefighting service provider, backed by the requisite facilities and skilled workforce.

While acknowledging the efficiency, asset and project management benefits of the Airservices Accelerate Program, the Chair and CEO of Airservices have assured me that the Program will not affect the level of safety provided by front-line air traffic and aviation rescue and firefighting service staff.   Hmm...oh yeah??

Airservices Accelerating towards disaster -
In the space of less than two weeks and under Harfwit's watch we've had...

Airservices, with Defence, is progressing?? the Onesky project with the aim to update our Air Traffic technology and in doing so it will be ready for increased activity and to do so more efficiently and safely...

Which brings me to today's Oz article that presents an upbeat Harfwit trying to resurrect the OneSKY Great White Elephant carcass by spruiking the fictional advantages of the OnePIE fairytale. Meanwhile a less upbeat RAAF Chief, while not directly supporting the Harfwit self-flagellating appraisal of OnePIE, does talk to the obvious advantages of having a integrated National ATC system. Just not sure Davies is referring to the present incarnation of the OnePIE clusterduck...

OneSKY to cut flight times
12:00amGREG BROWN
The OneSKY Australia program will reduce flight delays and make travel time shorter.

The OneSKY Australia program will reduce flight delays and make travel time shorter, according to Airservices Australia chief executive Jason Harfield.

Mr Harfield said the program, which will integrate the civil and defence air-traffic-control systems, would create efficiencies and lead to a better flight experience for passengers.

“Having one system means that all our controllers are getting a shared picture, there is not a separate view from a military perspective and a separate view form a civil perspective,” Mr Harfield said on Wednesday.

“When that occurs it means we can have more efficient and flexible operations, both from a military perspective ... (and) a civil perspective, which then flows on to improving flight times, reducing delays.

“From an airline perspective it means that they can get more turn times for the flights because they are in the air for less time. That has a flow-on benefit for even the regular travelling public because it is saving them time.”

Royal Australian Air Force chief Leo Davies said it was an opportunity to co-ordinate the use of airspace.

“The current military system is at lifetime, we are continuing to fix it, it is in many respects becoming a system that requires more and more effort to remain functional,” Air Marshal Davies said.

“We need a new air-traffic-management system for defence. The thing that flows then, logically, is why would we have a disparate system that was not ­integrated when we are talking about being integrated across all the aspects of aviation?

“We would have missed a real opportunity.”

He said the program needed to provide for the changing use of the sky.

“It needs to provide us with a level of flexibility, or growth, or development, or ingenuity, or adoption of a contemporary ­airspace environment that perhaps we haven’t even thought of yet,” he said.

“It can’t be yesterday’s paradigm, and what I see in the potential for OneSKY is the ability to open that avenue and make it contemporary.”

  
Speaking on another matter where ASA & the RAAF/Defence Dept. are seemingly joined at the hip, I note that on Monday 4 Corners takes a look at the disgraceful PFAS contamination issue at Defence Airports and facilities...

Image:


Four Corners
Contamination
 
Posted Thu 5 Oct 2017, 4:37pm
Updated Thu 5 Oct 2017, 4:37pm
Expires: Wednesday 6 October 2032 4:37pm

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MTF...P2

[Peetwo]

Update to 4 Corners 09/10 program - "Contaminated":

Image:


Four Corners
Contamination
 
Posted Thu 5 Oct 2017, 4:37pm
Updated Thu 5 Oct 2017, 4:37pm
Expires: Wednesday 6 October 2032 4:37pm

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---

Defence admits three-year delay in warning people about toxic foam danger
Four Corners
By Linton Besser, Lisa McGregor and Jeanavive McGregor
Updated yesterday at 3:41pm

Video: Toxic foam contamination leaves families living in fear (ABC News)

The Department of Defence has admitted it should have warned the public about a chemical contamination scandal three years earlier than it did — and says the cost to taxpayers to clean up the problem nationwide will mount into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Key points:

• Defence admits it should have gone public about the dangers of perfluorinated chemicals three years before it did
  
• The chemicals entered groundwater after being used at 18 bases around Australia
  
• US authorities have warned of a "probable link" between the chemicals and cancer
  

Defence is now tackling perfluorinated chemical pollution — the source of which was the widespread use of firefighting foam — at no fewer than 18 Defence bases across the country.

At some, local drinking water has been contaminated.

Since at least 2000, scientific research has linked these chemicals to a range of human diseases, though the Federal Government's formal health advice says there is "no consistent evidence" they cause specific illnesses.

Now, a Four Corners investigation has confirmed Defence misused the toxic firefighting foam for decades.

Despite explicit warnings dating back to 1987 that the product must not enter the environment, many thousands of litres of the foam were expelled onto bare earth or washed into stormwater systems.

"There's no doubt about it, that the way we used these products in the firefighting airfields back in the 80s and 90s was not as good as it should have been," department deputy secretary Steve Grzeskowiak said.

Map: Defence Force contamination sites

He also agreed Defence had erred in hiding the contamination outbreak for more than three years from the people who live near the Royal Australian Air Force base at Williamtown in NSW.

"I think if we had our time again, should we have told the community back in 2012, from the middle of 2012? We probably should," he told the program.

Defence only revealed the pollution scandal to Williamtown residents in September 2015.
We asked what you thought the outcome of the chemical contamination would be. Take a look at the comments to see what our readers had to say.

Government stance on class actions a 'slap in the face'



Photo: The source of the chemical pollution was the widespread use of firefighting foam. (CRC CARE)

The admissions will breathe new life into two separate class actions, representing almost 1,000 people, which accuse Defence of negligence and which seek financial compensation.

The Federal Government has so far lodged court papers defending its conduct in one of those cases, denying the claims for financial damages and maintaining Williamtown residents had run out of time to bring the litigation — even though Defence only told them about the contamination two years ago.

Ben Allen, a partner at Dentons, the law firm behind one of the actions, said this position by the Government was "a complete and utter slap in the face".

"They had no way of knowing about the problem prior to September 2015," he said.
Mr Grzeskowiak declined to comment on the court proceedings.



Photo: Williamtown residents have been asked to follow precautionary advice to minimise their exposure to PFAS chemicals. (Four Corners)

No quick or easy solution

The toxic chemicals were critical elements of an aqueous film-forming foam called Light Water which was manufactured by 3M.

In May 2000, the company announced it was phasing out the foam and US authorities warned the Australian Government on the same day that the foam's key chemical ingredients "potentially pose a risk to human health".

Documents show Defence did not fully replace the 3M foam until July 2012.
In just the past year, Defence has spent about $10 million attempting to filter the perfluorinated chemicals (commonly grouped as "per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances", or PFAS for short) from stormwater drains leaving the Williamtown base and entering the surrounding suburbs.

But testing by Four Corners showed the PFAS chemicals were still at elevated levels three weeks ago in these stormwater canals; at Dawson's Drain, for example, laboratory analysis showed one of the PFAS chemicals flowing from the base at 18 times the safe drinking level.



Photo: Dawson's Drain — one of the locations Four Corners tested water for contamination. (Four Corners)

The environmental scientist who ran a NSW Government inquiry that investigated the Williamtown contamination has told the program there was no way to "feasibly remediate" the site.

"You can treat some of the water in the drains, but there's several of those going off the base, and it's in the groundwater," Professor Mark Taylor said.

"It's just so expensive, it's so complicated … I don't think you really can. It's not a practical option."

Mr Grzeskowiak said the remediation was only just beginning and he couldn't identify when Williamtown could expect to be free of the pollution.

He also said he could not estimate the final cost of the clean-up.

He said that in the past five years, "the figure would be in excess of $100 million either currently expended or committed to be expended".

Asked if the final bill for taxpayers would be "in the hundreds of millions of dollars", he said: "I would say so."

Environmental impacts and 'probable' cancer link

Scientists have established that PFAS does not readily break down in the environment and accumulates in the food chain.

Elevated levels have been found in the blood of residents at Williamtown and Oakey in Queensland, which is home to an army aviation base.

The US Environmental Protection Agency says there is "suggestive evidence of carcinogenic potential" associated with the chemicals.

One major US study found a "probable link" to six diseases including two types of cancer.
There are, however, widely-acknowledged uncertainties in the science.

Experts have urged governments to protect communities now as the potential impact of exposure to the chemicals on human health becomes clearer.



Photo: Residents of Williamtown hold the Defence Department responsible for the contamination. (Four Corners)

Defence has adopted what it describes as a "precautionary approach", supplying bottled drinking water to several communities including Katherine in the Northern Territory, where the town's aquifer has been contaminated as a result of intensive firefighting training on the nearby Tindal RAAF base.

Former Tindal firefighters have described to Four Corners the use of hundreds of litres a week of the toxic foam concentrate in normal training and testing regimes.

This training was so intensive that at Oakey, more than 900 litres of the foam concentrate was discharged every week, according to Defence documents.

Assistant Defence Minister James McGrath said in May the Government was considering compensation options including land acquisitions.

An announcement is yet to be made.

& from RN Breakfast:

Four Corners uncovers mass water contamination scandal

• Listen now(Link will open in new window)
  
• Download audio
  

Broadcast: Monday 9 October 2017 8:36AM (view full episode)



Image: Residents of Williamtown were not informed of the contamination until 2015. (Four Corners)

Twenty-three ADF bases are currently being investigated after harmful P-FAS chemicals from fire-fighting foam seeped out of Defence bases and contaminated surrounding areas.

The Department of Defence has admitted cleaning up the water contamination will cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

About a thousand citizens from Oakey in Queensland and Williamtown in New South Wales — whose water supplies were contaminated — have launched class actions against the Department of Defence.

The contamination has also impacted residents in the Northern Territory town of Katherine.

MTF...P2

[P7_TOM]

A thread worth the reading:-

There are stars;

Quote:
Just imagine a letter turning up to:

The Approved Aeronautical Data Originator,
Upper Kikatinalong Shire Council,
PO Box 1,
GAFFA.

Then there are super stars:-

It’s worse than that, LS. The letter probably says something like this:

Aeronautical Data Originator,
Upper Kikatinalong Shire Council,
PO Box 1,
GAFFA.

Airservices would like to continue to publish information about your aerodrome/HLS/ALA. Before you provide the information, and before Airservices publishes the information, please note the following:

You must appoint a single senior manager within your organisation as the AIP responsible person for your organisation. If you do not, you commit a criminal offence carrying a penalty of 50 penalty units.

If the person you appoint does not have knowledge and competence to carry out the responsibilities of an AIP responsible person, you commit a criminal offence carrying a penalty of 50 penalty units.

Equivalent requirements and offences apply to your NOTAM authorised person, if you have one.

You must provide Airservices with the name of the AIP responsible person (and your NOTAM authorised person, if you have one) and notify Airservices of any changes. If you do not do so, you commit a strict liability criminal offence carrying a penalty of 50 penalty units.

You commit a criminal offence carrying a penalty of 50 penalty units if you do not notify Airservices of the need to change aeronautical information, as soon as practicable after you become aware of the need.

The data or information you provide must be in accordance with specifications Airservices gives you, or you commit a strict liability criminal offence carrying a penalty of 50 penalty units.

You must review, at least annually, the data and aeronautical information published in the AIP for which you are responsible, keep a record of that review and provide a copy of the review to CASA on request. If you do not do so, you commit a strict liability criminal offence carrying a penalty of 50 penalty units.

Yours in aviation safety and love and kisses

Airservices Australia

Two quotes borrowed from the UP – saved us a little time and work: thank you gentlemen, both. Except to repeat Newton and his law of acceleration; seems Halfwit has his pedal to the metal – which is fine of course until you bump into something…

The acceleration of an object as produced by a net force is directly proportional to the magnitude of the net force, in the same direction as the net force, and inversely proportional to the mass of the object.

The third law states that for every action (force) in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Now, you can’t be held to account for toxic pollution on an aerodrome which don’t exist; can you?- I rest my case M’lud….

“OK then, one for the road it is”.

[Peetwo]

Chalk, cheese & OneSKY fairytales -

Before I give an update from last evening's Airservices Estimates session, I came across an interesting article from Canada's news publication the 'Globe and Mail':

Nav Canada's ambitious plan – a satellite network to track planes around the world
FR SUCR[/url]


[url=https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/authors/eric-atkins]ERIC ATKINS
22 HOURS AGOOCTOBER 23, 2017
FOR SUBSCRIBERS

A SpaceX rocket launched this month from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base carrying 10 satellites destined for near-Earth orbit, part of Nav Canada's ambitious plan to wrap the globe in a digital net.
The full constellation of satellites, numbering 66 by the summer, will track airplanes and give air-traffic controllers the precise locations of aircraft flying over the 70 per cent of the world – oceans, mountains and remote areas – not covered by ground-based systems.

The system will be run by Aireon LLC, a venture of Nav Canada, the private non-profit company that operates the domestic civil air-navigation system. Nav Canada's partners on the project include satellite owner Iridium Communications Inc. and the air-navigation agencies of Italy, Denmark and Ireland. Another 24 national air-traffic authorities, including Portugal, Australia and South Africa, have signed up or made non-binding agreements to become customers when the system begins operating in 2018 or later, Nav Canada said.

With its network of satellites and ground stations, Aireon will transmit a plane's altitude, speed and direction to air-traffic controllers around the world, allowing aircraft to fly more direct routes with less distance between them.

This will save time, fuel and money and increase safety, says Neil Wilson, chief executive of Nav Canada.

"The signals give us real-time information as to where exactly the aircraft are," Mr. Wilson said. "That ability to know exactly where an aircraft is significantly enhances safety and enhances our ability to provide more efficient flight routes and altitudes that is going to save our customers a significant amount of money."

Vincent Capezzuto, Aireon's chief technology officer, said planes will be able to fly more closely together in such fuel-saving routes as the Atlantic jet stream. Traffic controllers currently leave safety bubbles of about 100 kilometres between planes over oceans because they cannot be sure of their locations. This separation could shrink to 15 kilometres.

Faster planes will be able to pass slower traffic safely; the data amassed on global traffic could be used to highlight trouble zones and alter flight paths that have traditionally followed landmarks or radar installations, Mr. Capezzuto said.

"Airspace was designed as a function of where the ground infrastructure was located. Aircraft usually followed rivers, mountains and power lines because they were visible from the air," Mr. Capezzuto said. "And what followed was radar and navigation aids – rotating lights and beacons, just like you have lighthouses for boats. Basically, you flew an indirect path to get somewhere because you follow these navigational aids. All that goes away. You don't have to think like that any more because we're looking at it from the flip-side – we're looking at it from space. Now you can fly from from point A to point B in a more direct path."

About 90 per cent of the world's planes are already fitted with the equipment that broadcasts their locations to ground-based receivers. But reception of the terrestrial towers does not extend more than a couple of hundred kilometres over oceans. "We take the same ground stations and we put them up on satellites," Mr. Capezzuto said.

With a territory that extends from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean and the North Pole, Nav Canada is responsible for 12 million aircraft movements a year, the second-highest total in the world. The North Atlantic stretch is the world's busiest airspace, with 1,200 daily flights to and from Europe.

Iridium says the system would have been able to find Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which is still missing three years after disappearing on a flight between Kuala Lumpur and Beijing.

Nav Canada is Aireon's biggest shareholder with a $150-million (U.S.) investment. Nav Canada's non-profit status means any savings reached though the Aireon system will be passed along to its customers, airlines and pilots, Mr. Wilson said.

Executives at Nav Canada and Iridium said they are confident the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration will sign on as a customer, pointing to recent funding approved by Congress for work on the project.

The FAA and Aireon ran a successful test flight using the system in March, in order to compare it with ground-based data in areas with high traffic density and signal interference. In a statement, the FAA said Aireon has "huge potential for improving services for many around the world who lack some surveillance or advanced separation tools, and we are independently validating that their space-based ADS-B service meets FAA established performance requirements for broadcast surveillance."

The FAA did not respond to e-mailed questions on Thursday, Friday or Monday.

In addition to hosting the Aireon technology, the new satellites will replace the Iridium satellites that have been orbiting the Earth for 20 years. These are same satellites Iridium has been using to power its network of satellite phones and other devices. (Formerly backed by Motorola, Iridium's $1.5-billion bankruptcy followed the launch in the late 1990s.)

Space is hot right now, as billionaires Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Branson race to commercialize space travel.

The Aireon system will undergo extensive testing before it can be proven effective. But some of the biggest risks the company faces begin right on the launch pad.

The satellites Iridium uses rockets owned by Space Exploration Technologies Corp., the company backed by Mr. Musk that has had two rockets explode since 2015.

None of the mishaps has involved Aireon equipment, but the risks are never far from the minds of the system's architects, most of whom have witnessed the launches first-hand.

"You build systems and then they have to survive that transport into space and they have to be ejected into where they have to go," Mr. Capezzuto said.

Each satellite is worth more than $30-million, including research and development. "If you want to multiply that by 10 for each launch you can see why I'm so nervous every time," Mr. Desch said. "There's a lot of satellites and costs riding on the top of a SpaceX rocket. That's why we built 81 [satellites] instead of just 66."


FOLLOW ERIC ATKINS ON TWITTER @ERICATKINS2

Now compare that inspiring story of Nav Canada's innovative, visionary and world leading air traffic control systems; to the ASA CEO Harfwit's stumbling, shambolic response to Senator Gallacher's accusation that the OneSKY contract is nothing more than a 'fairytale' (03:45 minutes):

MTF...P2

[Peetwo]

Further to the OneSKY fairy-tale -

Via Oz Aviation:

Revised OneSky tender price under evaluation
October 26, 2017 by Gerard Frawley
Defence has revealed that a new tender price for Australia’s ambitious OneSky program to acquire a joint civil and military air traffic management system is currently under evaluation.

Thales was announced as the successful supplier for the Airservices Australia-led OneSky project at the Avalon Airshow in February 2015. However, negotiations between Airservices and the French-headquartered aerospace and defence company have become increasingly protracted, and an Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) report published in April questioned OneSky’s value for money, suggesting Australia could end up paying too much for the project.

“In June last year they [Thales] submitted an offer based on their original tendered offer that had gone through a further negotiation phase,” Rear Admiral Tony Dalton told the Senate’s Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade committee on Wednesday evening.

“The assessment of that offer in June last year was it didn’t represent value for money,” RADM Dalton, who is now general manager ships at Defence’s Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group (CASG) but retains responsibility for Defence’s portion of the OneSky program, told the committee.

“There has been a degree of work done on that offer with Thales in the intervening period that culminated with a revised price being offered by Thales last month. That is currently under assessment.”

Defence’s share of the OneSky program is known as ‘Project AIR 5431 Phase 3 Civil Military Air Traffic Management System’, and was added to the government’s Projects of Concern list of Defence acquisition programs requiring special remediation, in August, a near unprecedented move for a program yet to be contracted.

RADM Dalton explained that the delay in signing contracts was one reason OneSky was added to the Projects of Concern list, and that further delays might force Defence to seek an alternative supplier to replace its existing Australian Defence Air Traffic System (or ADATS).

“Well certainly the timeframe has slipped. That’s been part of the issue and that’s why it’s been elevated to a Project of Concern,” RADM Dalton said.

“But inside our budget, we have some allowances to cater for the obsolescence emerging in the current defence system. That clearly is a concern for us and there is a finite amount of time that the process can go on before we have to look at alternatives.”
Further, RADM Dalton confirmed the cost of Defence’s share of the program could be higher than first expected.

“Our contribution to the overall OneSky program may need to increase. We have made some allowances in the revised Integrated Investment Program to accommodate for that increase. Our negotiations with Airservices have said that there’s a finite amount of money that we’re prepared to increase.

“Part of the discussions that we’ve had with Thales, through the Project of Concern process, has made that abundantly clear to Thales

MTF...P2  

[Peetwo]

Further to the OneSKY fairy-tale -

Via Oz Aviation:

Revised OneSky tender price under evaluation
October 26, 2017 by Gerard Frawley
Defence has revealed that a new tender price for Australia’s ambitious OneSky program to acquire a joint civil and military air traffic management system is currently under evaluation.

Thales was announced as the successful supplier for the Airservices Australia-led OneSky project at the Avalon Airshow in February 2015. However, negotiations between Airservices and the French-headquartered aerospace and defence company have become increasingly protracted, and an Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) report published in April questioned OneSky’s value for money, suggesting Australia could end up paying too much for the project.

“In June last year they [Thales] submitted an offer based on their original tendered offer that had gone through a further negotiation phase,” Rear Admiral Tony Dalton told the Senate’s Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade committee on Wednesday evening.

“The assessment of that offer in June last year was it didn’t represent value for money,” RADM Dalton, who is now general manager ships at Defence’s Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group (CASG) but retains responsibility for Defence’s portion of the OneSky program, told the committee.

“There has been a degree of work done on that offer with Thales in the intervening period that culminated with a revised price being offered by Thales last month. That is currently under assessment.”

Defence’s share of the OneSky program is known as ‘Project AIR 5431 Phase 3 Civil Military Air Traffic Management System’, and was added to the government’s Projects of Concern list of Defence acquisition programs requiring special remediation, in August, a near unprecedented move for a program yet to be contracted.

RADM Dalton explained that the delay in signing contracts was one reason OneSky was added to the Projects of Concern list, and that further delays might force Defence to seek an alternative supplier to replace its existing Australian Defence Air Traffic System (or ADATS).

“Well certainly the timeframe has slipped. That’s been part of the issue and that’s why it’s been elevated to a Project of Concern,” RADM Dalton said.

“But inside our budget, we have some allowances to cater for the obsolescence emerging in the current defence system. That clearly is a concern for us and there is a finite amount of time that the process can go on before we have to look at alternatives.”
Further, RADM Dalton confirmed the cost of Defence’s share of the program could be higher than first expected.

“Our contribution to the overall OneSky program may need to increase. We have made some allowances in the revised Integrated Investment Program to accommodate for that increase. Our negotiations with Airservices have said that there’s a finite amount of money that we’re prepared to increase.

“Part of the discussions that we’ve had with Thales, through the Project of Concern process, has made that abundantly clear to Thales

ASA Hansard 23/10/17:

http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/sear...nt=Default

MTF...P2

[Kharon]

Concerned? – Damn right I am..

5.17.
The Projects of Concern list was established in 2008 to focus the attention of Defence and industry senior management on solving the issues required to remediate listed projects. Projects are put on the list when there are significant challenges with scheduling, cost, capability delivery or project management.12

The Gallacher question, posed at the very beginning of the video (00.05) drags Halfwit into a  serious place – ‘projects of concern’. The non response is a classic; as far as Halfwit is concerned it’s all good and he is going to contract by years end. Perhaps someone could take out the back, sit him down and explain, in simple terms, just how much bother he’s in and what he is staring down. He is part of serious governmental interest into the ‘One big pie’ scam and the trough of plenty. Lucky he has defence on side, without them I reckon O’Sullivan would cut him a new one and feed him the old.

Toot toot.

[Peetwo]

Harfwit & the Peter Principle -

Extract from this week's SBG: A Tragic Situation Blossoming.

‘Promoted to a level of incompetence’; a phrased coined by L.J. Peter. “It states that the selection of a candidate for a position is based on the candidate's performance in their current role, rather than on abilities relevant to the intended role. Thus, employees only stop being promoted once they can no longer perform effectively, and "managers rise to the level of their incompetence".

IMO for an even better example (than HVH) of the 'Peter Principle', one cannot go past the Airservices Board's glove puppet CEO Jason Harfield...

From the other Aunty today, here is further proof of the sheer incompetence of 'Electric Blue' Harfwit and his executive minions:  

Airservices Australia admits it did not 'consult sufficiently' over new Hobart flight paths
By Rhiana Whitson

Updated about 6 hours ago Mon 13 Nov 2017, 12:20pm



Photo: Residents say the changes are like "living under a superhighway". (Supplied: Julie Smith)

Airservices Australia has admitted bungling the consultation process for a new Hobart arrival flight path over Dunalley, saying it was unaware the area was still recovering from the 2013 bushfires.

There's growing anger about the decision to introduce a singular flight path into Hobart airport and on Saturday, more than 100 people attended an information session held by the Federal Government-owned company to demand answers.

Previously, planes flying in and out of Hobart were dispersed over a number of flight paths but now they fly over Copping, Boomer Bay, Dunalley and Connelly's Marsh, before turning into the airport.



Photo: The community meeting heard about alternative flight paths. (ABC News: Rhiana Whitson)

Airservices Australia southern operations manager Steve Clarke said the increase in the number of planes flying into the state and the availability of new technology meant a singular route was necessary.

"What we are doing is making it safer, because it is far more predictable and less complex, there is less air traffic controller intervention in the process," he said.

Residents at the meeting grilled Airservices staff, demanding to know why the change had been imposed on them without consultation.

Mr Clarke, who said the change would not result in air traffic control job cuts, added that Airservices Australia would review its internal procedures.

"I am here to acknowledge that we didn't consult sufficiently on these changes," he said.

"I can see that it's a close-knit community. They've been through some issues that we weren't aware of in terms of bushfire and other things. I have certainly heard their concerns."

Residents voiced concerns about the effect plane noise would have on tourism.
Tom Gray is starting a new business in the area but is considering pulling the pin because of the plan.

"No-one is going to want to get married under a flight path," he said.

"When you are trying to promote Tasmania's beauty, with its views, produce and serenity, I feel this will be majorly interrupted under 30 plus planes a day."



Photo: New flight paths over the bushfire-affected communities in Tasmania have residents devastated. (Supplied: Tam Joy Jansen)

Resident David Patman obtained Airservices Australia documents under Freedom of Information laws.

He said they showed a discrepancy between what the company knew and what it wanted to say publicly.

The environmental assessment for the Hobart Airport flight path plan said there would be newly overflown areas, and recommended stakeholder engagement.

"The proposed changes may result in visual change to aircraft tracking and/or noise levels," the assessment said.

In contrast, a document containing communications briefing notes repeatedly instructed the company to tell Hobart Airport, Federal MPs, and residents that "the proposed flight paths will not overfly new residents".

Mr Patman said he was considering lodging a complaint against Airservices Australia with the Commonwealth ombudsman.

"It really concerns me that they have misled and provided false information in order to get this through," he said.

"The first we heard of it was 30 planes flying overhead a day."

Resident Rachel Deane said the community was still getting back on its feet after 2013 Dunalley bushfires.

"We are only just starting to recover from that, emotionally and physically and to have this imposed on us is like insult to injury," she said.

"We don't want to live under a super highway."

Airservices Australia is accepting feedback on alternative flight path proposals until November 19

While on the hot subject of this week's SBG ( i.e. top-cover experts the ATCB); I note that over on the UP Dick asks the question - on the ATSB clearly holds back Mt Hotham incident report - whether the ATSB is providing O&O topcover on behalf of ASA:

...I have started a new thread on this because after reading an article in The Australian this morning, and also the editorial, it appears that it is going to be at least two and a half years from the incident to when the report actually sees the light of day.


A summary of the incident can be seen on the ATSB website here: https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications...r/ao-2015-108/

How could a report about such a simple incident take so long?

Could it be that the original report recommends that Airservices use the radar properly at Mt Hotham (let’s say bring in a bit of Class E airspace) and no one can bring themselves to actually put this in writing, as it may confirm what others have been saying for years?

This is a rumour network. Does anyone have a factually based rumour on why the delay has been so great?

It is also interesting that the report on Richard Green’s fatal helicopter crash, now two years ago, has still not seen the light of day. It keeps getting put off and put off.

What is going on here? It would be fascinating to know...

 
And Old Akro follows that up with this:

...Duck Pilot, If you look at the throughput of reports over the last 2 months, its slowed to a dribble. Thats not consistent with high workload.


And they seem to be able to fit collaboration with other bodies and especially overseas authorities into their schedule.

More likely, they are completely absorbed to the point of apoplexy by high profile political cases like the Pelair one. You'd think that if the ATSB mess that up yet again, then they're history.

The Mt Hotham incident that Dick highlights is the one involving Max Quartemain & VH-OWN. My guess is that this has been placed on hold so they can make it align with the Essendon Airport accident investigation. Which you would have to say represents very questionable ethics.

The Mt Hotham airport report was already past due when the Essendon airport accident occurred. My personal unsubstantiated, biased reasoning is that any ATSB report that criticises AsA is very slow coming, and (as Dick pints out) there are some pretty big questions for AsA to answer in this incident. One of which is that AsA claimed to not have radar coverage of the aircraft and yet FlightAware did on its public web page.

I can imagine that the delay in the Mt Hotham report coupled with the Essendon accident puts the ATSB in a difficult position. If they criticise the pilot, then I can imagine there is a gaggle of lawyers warming up in the wings in the USA who will be itching to add the ATSB to the list of litigants...

Hmm...no comment -

MTF...P2

[Peetwo]

Airservices now 'match fit' and approaching a red dawn horizon -

The concept of "Red sky at night, shepherd's delight. Red sky in the morning, shepherd's warning" first appears in the Bible in the book of Matthew. It is an old weather saying often used at sunrise and sunset to signify the changing sky and originally known to help the shepherds prepare for the next day's weather.Jul 17, 2017

Red sky at night and other weather lore - Met Office
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/learning/le...y-at-night

ASA CEO Harfwit has been busy lately sprouting unadulterated bollocks - "nothing to see here move along" - at a couple of notable Alphabet soup talkfests:

News Item

Airservices presents at RAAA

27 Oct 2017
[/url]
Airservices Australia Chief Executive Officer Jason Harfield addressed delegates at the Regional Aviation Association of Australia’s National Convention this afternoon.

The two day convention is being held on the Gold Coast and brings together industry leaders, regional operators, technical experts, manufacturers, suppliers, government and other regulatory bodies.

During his address, Mr Harfield discussed the promises Airservices is now delivering through the Accelerate program, moving from an out-dated operating model to become a profitable, sustainable, more customer-focused organisation.

He also acknowledged the essential role regional aviation plays in nurturing health, connectivity, and opportunities for regional and remote Australians. As well as how Airservices will continue to protect and promote general aviation by continuing to waive charges for low volume general aviation operators.

Read a full copy of Jason’s speech.

---

News Item

Airservices presents at AAA

15 Nov 2017

Airservices Australia Chief Executive Officer Jason Harfield addressed delegates at the Australian Airports Association National Conference this morning (15 November 2017).
The four day conference is being held in Adelaide and is Australia’s biggest annual aviation conference and exhibition attracting more than 600 delegates from the aviation and airport industry.

During his address, Mr Harfield discussed the importance of Australia’s aviation ecosystem working to its full potential with the support and input of many players including airports, airlines and Airservices.

Airservices Airport Collaborative Decision Making (A-CDM) project was also addressed during the presentation highlighting to delegates that A-CDM is about working with partners at airports and across the aviation ecosystem sharing information to boost operational performance.

Airservices Air Traffic Management Network Services Manager Paddy Goodall will be addressing delegates later today on harnessing information to enhance the aviation network.

Chief Fire Officer Glenn Wood will be presenting to delegates tomorrow (16 November 2017) on protecting the aviation industry, the true value of Airservices Aviation Rescue Fire Fighting Services.

Read a full copy of [url=https://newsroom.airservicesaustralia.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/385L2JVWW6YOCGKS.pdf]Jason’s speech.

If you can stomach the pony pooh emanating from these talkfest speeches then feel free to click on the links above...

As a passing strange coincidence and seemingly in direct contradiction to the warm fuzzy diatribe from Harfwit; I note that in the Senate yesterday that the ToR for a RRAT committee Senate inquiry motion received bipartisan support...

Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee
Reference
Senator URQUHART (Tasmania—Opposition Whip in the Senate) (12:17): At the request of Senators Sterle and O'Sullivan, I move:

That the following matter be referred to the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee for inquiry and report by 30 March 2018:

The operation, regulation and funding of air route service delivery to rural, regional and remote communities, with particular reference to:

(a) social and economic impacts of air route supply and airfare pricing;
(b) different legal, regulatory, policy and pricing frameworks and practices across the Commonwealth, states and territories;
© how airlines determine fare pricing;
(d) the determination of airport charges for landing and security fees, aircraft type and customer demand;
(e) pricing determination, subsidisation and equity of airfares;
(f) determination of regulated routes and distribution of residents' fares across regulated routes;
(g) airline competition within rural and regional routes;
(h) consistency of aircraft supply and retrieval of passengers by airlines during aircraft maintenance and breakdown;
(i) all related costs and charges imposed by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority; and
(j) any related matters.

Senator O'SULLIVAN (Queensland) (12:18): I seek leave to make a short statement.

The PRESIDENT: Leave is granted for one minute.
Senator O'SULLIVAN: I want to thank the Labor Party for their cooperation and support for the development of this reference, which will be, of course, under the chairmanship of Senator Sterle. This is a very important reference. I am speaking out now to our crossbench colleagues to pay attention to this and support it. This is about trying to bring equity into the cost impacts of regional airline movements for our people in regional Australia, not just my home state of Queensland. We've got some very atrocious examples of gouging where it costs up to $2,000 for people to travel the same distances it costs them $78 to travel between the metros, including people who require constant medical attention and are having to go to the cities. This has to be brought to an end, and we hope this committee reference will take us some way towards being able to make recommendations to government about changes.
Question agreed to.

   
Interesting times ahead me thinks...
MTF...P2

[Peetwo]

Harfwit forced to backtrack on YMHB STAR duck-up -

Via Hobart's Mercury

Changes to flight paths into Hobart Airport raised the ire of Forestier Peninsula residents, forcing a review of the changes.

Four options in Airservices Australia review of flight paths into Hobart Airport

ALEX LUTTRELL and PATRICK GEE, Mercury
November 20, 2017 8:45pm

A DECISION on flight paths over southern Tasmania is expected on Wednesday, with four possible alternatives put forward after a review.[/font]
Since last month Airservices Australia has been reviewing flight path changes into Hobart Airport that were made in September.

The changes would have resulted in up to 50 planes a day flying over Boomer Bay, Dunalley and other Forestier Peninsula towns.

MORE: FLIGHT PATH BACKLASH FORCES RETHINK

Airservices Australia said the changes were made to organise aircraft movements on to standard routes, but backtracked and announced it would examine possible alternatives.

As part of the review, the authority has revealed four possible flight paths, with a decision expected during a meeting at Hobart Airport on Wednesday morning.

MORE: NEW FLIGHT PATHS PROMPTS PETITION FROM RESIDENTS


The alternatives are:

1 CONTINUE with the same path over the Forestier Peninsula.
2 A PATH over Connelly’s Marsh and Sloping Main similar to the previous approach.
3 PLANES flying from the east of Maria Island and between Dunalley and Murdunna, for flights arriving from Sydney and Brisbane
4 A ROUTE  over Kettering, Oyster Cove, Snug and Bruny Island as an approach for planes arriving from Melbourne and Adelaide.



A map showing the areas of possible new flight paths into Hobart Airport.

The final two alternatives would require Airservices Australia submitting a proposal to the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, which could take a year to process because of environmental and community assessments. If the two proposals failed to get through CASA, the first two options would be used.

Bream Creek’s Joan Ward estimated up to 700 people were affected in the Sorell area and more in the Tasman Peninsula area.

Ms Ward said there were 300 signatures on a petition to be lodged to Federal Transport Minister Darren Chester calling for changes.

“Airservices Australia have changed the goalposts a couple of times and they’re not giving us accurate information in terms of the reasons,” she said.

“First off they told us the reason was for safety. Then it was fuel efficiency [and] now the latest thing is a navigation beacon has been moved and now we’re told it’s been put back. We want the flight paths reversed back to what they originally were.”



Joan Ward, of Bream Creek, says hundreds of people in the South are affected by the new flight paths. Picture: MATT THOMPSON

Airservices Australia said on its website that a report of the review would be published on Wednesday.

“The report will set out the alternatives ... and the reasons why each was determined,” the company said.

“It will also contain a summary of the issues raised in the community feedback and complaints.”

A REVIEW of flight paths options over southern Tasmania has revealed four possible options — including one trajectory over North Bruny Island.
Since last month, Airservices Australia has been reviewing flight path changes into Hobart Airport made in September.

The changes would have resulted in up to 50 planes a day flying over Boomer Bay, Dunalley and other Forestier Peninsula towns, concerning residents.
Airservices Australia said the changes were made to organise aircraft movements on to standard routes, but backtracked and announced it would investigate alternative paths.

The company has now revealed four possible flight path options:

1 CONTINUE  with the same path over the Forestier Peninsula;
2 ESTABLISH a path over Connellys Marsh;
3 DIRECT path from east of Maria Island and between Dunalley and Murdunna as an eastern approach;
4 OVER  North Bruny Island as a western approach.

Airservices Australia will announce its decision at a meeting at Hobart Airport on Wednesday at 10am.

Poor DDDDDarren, the triple-Ps (Peter Principle pigeons) continue to come home to roost -



MTF...P2

[Peetwo]

Sterlo probes Harfwit/Miniscule on Aviation & Airport Matters -

From the QON index I get the feeling that Senator Sterle is being well advised on matters to do with airports and Airservices. From the following QON Sterlo appears to even have an understanding of the relevance of ICAO SARPs and their relationship to CASR Part 139...

• Overdue - No
  
• Asked Of - Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development
  
• Proof Hansard Page/Written - Written
  
• Portfolio Question Number - 478
  
• Question
  The CASA website has advertised Notice of proposed rulemaking - Post-implementation review of the legislative framework for Part 139 - Aerodromes (NPRM 1426AS) and states in part that the proposed amendments to Part 139 of CASR and the Part 139 MOS aim to:
  
  more closely reflect the Standards and Recommended Practices (SARP) for Annex 14, Aerodromes to the International Convention on Civil Aviation (the Chicago Convention).
  
  I also note that in a prior submission to this Senate Committee regarding Annex 17 Airport Security that the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development made a similar statement about the importance of being more closely aligned to ICAO SARPs.
  
  Questions:
  
  

1. Would you agree that it is important as a signatory of the Chicago Convention, that Australia closely follow the ICAO SARPs and harmonize with International aviation standards and recommended practices?
   
2. Why is this same reasoning not being applied to ARFFS in Australia and the review of CASR 139H?
   
3. How is the weakening of the establishment (from 350,000 to 5000,000 passengers per annum) and disestablishment (from triggers for an Aviation Rescue and Firefighting Service consistent with the above policy to more closely reflect the Standards and Recommended Practices (SARP) for Annex 14, Aerodromes to the International Convention on Civil Aviation (the Chicago Convention)
   
4. What happens to passengers onboard a large domestic passenger plane that crashes at an unprotected airport?
   

Continuing on the ARFFS theme:

• Overdue - No
  
• Asked Of - Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development
  
• Proof Hansard Page/Written - Written
  
• Portfolio Question Number - 477
  
• Question - At the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee Estimates Hearing on the 23 October 2017, Airservices Australia were questioned about the agreed recommendation to weaken the regulations by raising the threshold for the establishment of an Aviation Rescue and Firefighting Service (ARFFS) from 350,000 passengers to 500,000 passengers per year. At page 141 Mr Harfield states that the threshold for disestablishing an ARFFS at an airport would stay at 300,000 passengers:
  
  Senator GALLACHER: Can I go to the general thrust of firefighting services, and I'll pick on Hamilton Island because I know that, through the Public Works Committee, we just commissioned a new firefighting service there. However, the federal minister and CASA are supporting a raising of the threshold of airports that require firefighting services to 500,000 a year. That will mean that Ballina, Coffs Harbour, Ayres Rock, Gladstone, Hamilton Island, Broome, Karratha, Port Hedland and Newman will all fall under that 500,000. In some of those areas, you've invested significant amounts of taxpayers' money building new stations and I know this from the Public Works Committee. Should that weakening of the regulations go through, what will happen? Will you raze these facilities abandon them and take the firefighters out? Mr Harfield: No. With the new threshold of 500,000 to establish a new fire station, there is a disestablishment criterion staying at 300,000 passengers. Senator GALLACHER: So if there's an existing facility, it stays? Mr Harfield: In the supplementary estimates last year, I was asked that very question. I stated categorically that we would not be closing those stations and then I reiterated that at the May estimates, where I was asked a direct question. I stated in Hansard that we would not be disestablishing any of those stations; they will be staying online. Senator STERLE: Even though Newman's just under 300,000? Mr Harfield: Even if they go under the disestablishment threshold, we will not be closing those stations. I've publicly reiterated that on a number of occasions.
  
  The Aviation Rescue Fire Fighting (ARFFS) Regulatory Policy Review Agreed Recommendation 6 states The ARFFS provider must complete a risk review relating to the possible disestablishment of an ARFFS within six months of the withdrawal of scheduled international passenger air services or the BITRE confirming that passenger numbers have remained below 400,000 for a twelve-month period.
  
  Question:
  
  1. Is the disestablishment trigger remaining at 300,000 passengers per annum as claimed, or is it being changed to 400,000 passengers per annum?
  

Download question

---

&..

• Overdue - No
  
• Asked Of - Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development
  
• Proof Hansard Page/Written - Written
  
• Portfolio Question Number - 479
  
• Question
  The current CASR Regulations contain the obligation for the ARFFS to respond to any fire on the aerodrome whether it started in an aircraft or not. It is also a very firmly established practice for the past 20+ years that ARFFS will respond to any medical emergencies on the aerodrome. This has provided aerodrome users/owners with a significantly advanced level of safety. 
  
  It reduces the insurance premiums of the airport owners, tenants and users. It has been responsible for saving several very important buildings and installations on the airports. 
  
  It overcomes the very strict and likely to get stricter security access into the restricted airside environment. 
  
   It has most importantly directly saved many lives over that 20-year period. 
  
   It provides immediate response within the chain of survival that the State Ambulance services can due to workloads, security/access restrictions and the requirements for escort into the airside areas. 
  
   Questions: 
  
  

1.  Does Airservices Australia support the removal of this safety requirement from the new regulations? 
   
2.  What has changed to make saving peoples lives and property no longer the ARFFS role when they are obviously the most suitably located and qualified emergency service with full unrestricted access to the airside environments?
   
3. How does removing this vital function of the ARFFS meet the statement of expectations from Minister Chester that he requires a World Class ARFFS?
   

Download question

---

• Overdue - No
  
• Asked Of - Airservices Australia
  
• Proof Hansard Page/Written - Written
  
• Portfolio Question Number - 480
  
• Question
  The current CASR Regulations contain the obligation for the ARFFS to respond to any fire on the aerodrome whether it started in an aircraft or not. It is also a very firmly established practice for the past 20+ years that ARFFS will respond to any medical emergencies on the aerodrome. This has provided aerodrome users/owners with a significantly advanced level of safety.
  
  It reduces the insurance premiums of the airport owners, tenants and users. It has been responsible for saving several very important buildings and installations on the airports.
  
  It overcomes the very strict and likely to get stricter security access into the restricted airside environment.
  
  It has most importantly directly saved many lives over that 20-year period.
  
  It provides immediate response within the chain of survival that the State Ambulance services can due to workloads, security/access restrictions and the requirements for escort into the airside areas.
  
  Questions:
  
  

1. Does Airservices Australia support the removal of this safety requirement from the new regulations?
   
2. What has changed to make saving peoples lives and property no longer the ARFFS role when they are obviously the most suitably located and qualified emergency service with full unrestricted access to the airside environments?
   
3. How does removing this vital function of the ARFFS meet the statement of expectations from Minister Chester that he requires a World Class ARFFS?
   

Download question

And on the PFAS issue:

• Overdue - No
  
• Asked Of - Airservices Australia
  
• Proof Hansard Page/Written - Written
  
• Portfolio Question Number - 475
  
• Question
  At the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee Estimates Hearing on the 23 October 2017, Airservices Australia were questioned about the continued use of non-CASA approved foams, and whether there is a national management plan to deal with the exposure to ARFFS firefighters to PFAS. At page 165 of the Proof Hansard Airservices Australia CEO Jason Harfield is recorded as stating Airservices Australia is currently reviewing its work health and safety controls:
  
  Senator McCARTHY: A national management plan around dealing with PFAS? Mr Harfield: Yes. We have a national plan where we're going through preliminary site testing at all our locations, and they are underway. We just released last week the results for the Gold Coast for some off airport testing, and we continue to work with the Prime Minister and Cabinet PFAS task force for the whole-of-government approach, as well as, as mentioned before, continuing to review our work health and safety controls to ensure that they are as effective as possible.
  
  Questions:
  
  
  1. What controls are currently in place?
     
  2. If PPE is your primary control, how and when is decontamination required?
     
  3. who will be responsible for reviewing these controls?
     
  4. When did this review begin?
     
  5. In terms of the legacy of PFAS contamination, have you tested all ARFF fire grounds for PFAS?
     
  6. Are firefighters still being exposed to PFAS when they train on the ARFFS fire grounds?
     
  7. Is Airservices Australia resisting providing testing information to the firefighters union who have made four FOI Requests and are yet to be provided with the information requested?
     
  8. Why is Airservices Australia not blood testing or health monitoring the firefighters for PFAS?
     
  9. Why is Airservices Australia still using the non CASA approved foam at Darwin and Townsville? Is this a cost-saving measure that is putting the lives of firefighters, and the health of the community surrounding those fire grounds at risk?
     

Download question

---

• Overdue - No
  
• Asked Of - Airservices Australia
  
• Proof Hansard Page/Written - Written
  
• Portfolio Question Number - 476
  
• Question
  Mr Harfield stated at page 146 that Airservices Australia was being proactive in its management of PFAS and to mitigate the health risk to firefighters:
  
  Mr Harfield: The issue that we have been trying to deal with is how to manage this situation where the science hasn't caught up and to manage it in a proactive way without actually setting precedents that we are not quite aware of. We're trying to be as diligent as we possibly can with the science and what the evidence is around it. Senator STERLE: I suppose it gets to the stage now that if the firefighters start developing symptoms that Senator Gallacher talked about that are in America, where does that put Airservices? Mr Harfield: We are doing everything we possibly can to mitigate the risk. Senator STERLE: I understand that. Mr Harfield: We are monitoring the situation all the time and taking advice and continuing to review our protocols and monitoring.
  
  Questions:
  
  
  1. Has Airservices Australia produced any procedures or guidance to the firefighters who continue to work in PFAS contaminated sites, or with non-CASA approved foams?
     
  2. What are the things that Airservices Australia are using to mitigate the risk?
     
  3. Is Airservices Australia following the National Industrial Chemicals Notification and Assessment Scheme (NICNAS) recommendations and advice for industries using products containing PFAS?
     
  4. If so, what NICNAS recommendations and advice is being followed and implemented?
     
  5. If not, why not?
     
     Download question
     

---

• Overdue - No
  
• Asked Of - Airservices Australia
  
• Proof Hansard Page/Written - Written
  
• Portfolio Question Number - 480
  
• Question
  The current CASR Regulations contain the obligation for the ARFFS to respond to any fire on the aerodrome whether it started in an aircraft or not. It is also a very firmly established practice for the past 20+ years that ARFFS will respond to any medical emergencies on the aerodrome. This has provided aerodrome users/owners with a significantly advanced level of safety.
  
  It reduces the insurance premiums of the airport owners, tenants and users. It has been responsible for saving several very important buildings and installations on the airports.
  
  It overcomes the very strict and likely to get stricter security access into the restricted airside environment.
  
  It has most importantly directly saved many lives over that 20-year period.
  
  It provides immediate response within the chain of survival that the State Ambulance services can due to workloads, security/access restrictions and the requirements for escort into the airside areas.
  
  Questions:
  
  
  1. Does Airservices Australia support the removal of this safety requirement from the new regulations?
     
  2. What has changed to make saving peoples lives and property no longer the ARFFS role when they are obviously the most suitably located and qualified emergency service with full unrestricted access to the airside environments?
     
  3. How does removing this vital function of the ARFFS meet the statement of expectations from Minister Chester that he requires a World Class ARFFS?
     

Download question

MTF me thinks? - P2

[Peetwo]

Harfwit & the Peter Principle continues into 2018 -

It looks like the shambolic Sir A & Harfwit management of ASA will unfortunately continue into 2018...
 
 Reference post #550:

Extract from this week's SBG: A Tragic Situation Blossoming.

‘Promoted to a level of incompetence’; a phrased coined by L.J. Peter. “It states that the selection of a candidate for a position is based on the candidate's performance in their current role, rather than on abilities relevant to the intended role. Thus, employees only stop being promoted once they can no longer perform effectively, and "managers rise to the level of their incompetence".

IMO for an even better example (than HVH) of the 'Peter Principle', one cannot go past the Airservices Board's glove puppet CEO Jason Harfield...

From the Klan-man, via the Oz today (29 Dec '17):

Regulator’s red-tape climb-down

12:00amANTHONY KLAN

The nation’s air traffic regulator has been forced into an embarrassing backdown over a red-tape hurdle it set.

---

The nation’s air traffic regulator has been forced into an embarrassing backdown after it announced more than 2000 airstrips and helipads nationwide — including those connected to more than 140 hospitals — would be wiped from the map if they did not clear a looming red-tape hurdle.

Airservices Australia in September announced the “operator” of every airport, airstrip and helipad nationwide must nominate an “aeronautical data originator”, or ADO, a person that would provide it with regular updates of the location and contact details of each facility.

The regulator said if operators failed to comply by January 4, it would move to “remove any reference to any remaining (airstrips and helipads) without a registered ADO” from all aeronautical information products.

Airservices Australia said it had undertaken “best efforts” to “identify ADOs” for more than 2000 airstrips and helipads but had “now exhausted all reasonable avenues of inquiry in relation to the identification of the remaining ADOs”.

This was despite the list of 2000-plus facilities including the Sydney Children’s Hospital, the Royal Perth Hospital, the Sea World theme park on the Gold Coast and facilities owned and operated by the Royal Australian Navy and Queensland Police.

Airservices Australia declined to comment when asked why it had announced the 2000-plus locations would be wiped from the map, why operators were required to regularly update the location of airstrips and airports when by nature they don’t move, and why it had been unable to contact major hospitals, the Navy or Queensland Police.

In a statement yesterday, the government body said the September “aeronautical information circular” had been removed as it “required improvement, and further context was required to explain (its) intent”.

Airservices Australia issued a replacement circular on December 19 reversing its dictum that all non-compliant facilities would be wiped from the map following an industry outcry.

Airservices Australia operates under chief executive Jason Harfield and answers to federal Transport Minister Barnaby Joyce, who replaced Darren Chester in a ministerial reshuffle this month.

Veteran pilot Bill Hamilton, who lobbied against the removal of airstrips and helipads from pilot resources, said the case was a classic example of the aviation regulator prioritising “box ticking” and bureaucracy over common sense and, ultimately, safety.

“It takes a particular brand of brain-dead bureaucrat to decide the best way to improve safety is to get rid of the (location details) of almost every aeronautical approach in the country,” Mr Hamilton said yesterday. “And to say they couldn’t contact the Royal Australian Navy — I know it’s not all that big, but nevertheless it’s not all that small that it’s invisible.”

Aviation Australia and the Civil Aviation and Safety Authority are facing criticism for over-regulating the sector to the point where civil aviation is in decline and many flight schools have been forced to close their doors.

In its updated circular, Airservices Australia said the September announcement had been aimed at “improving the integrity of the data­base” of airstrip and helipad operators. It made no reference to any facilities being removed from the map, or to its failed efforts to contact the operators.

---

And the now almost obligatory (chocfrog) response comment courtesy Sandy... :

 Like CASA, when this failed model of governance was invented off the back of the otherwise laudable Thatcher privatisation reforms, AA is an independent Commonwealth Corporation that has cost us all dearly. Initially CASA and AA were designated as Government Business Enterprises, GBEs being enthusiastically touted by the Public Service mandarins as a way to save money by ‘user pays’ (through the nose). What mandarins did not expose was the fact that the top manager’ remuneration would soar into realms that could not have dreamt of previously, uncoupled and unshackled from the Public Service Act. In addition, as monopoly ‘businesses’ they’ve been able to fee gouge, and create ‘business’ opportunities for consultants, sometimes former employees. 

Ministerial control? Nothing to see here, nothing more than the occasional Statement of Expectations written for the Minister by guess who. In terms of real business in the Nation the losses, certainly in General Aviation would be countless $billions and now pilot shortages in the country that was once pioneering in aviation. Alex in the Rises

P2 comment - My AP New Year's nomination for QOTM & a choccy frog for Bill Hamilton...

...said the case was a classic example of the aviation regulator prioritising “box ticking” and bureaucracy over common sense and, ultimately, safety.

“It takes a particular brand of brain-dead bureaucrat to decide the best way to improve safety is to get rid of the (location details) of almost every aeronautical approach in the country,” Mr Hamilton said yesterday. “And to say they couldn’t contact the Royal Australian Navy — I know it’s not all that big, but nevertheless it’s not all that small that it’s invisible.”...


MTF...P2

[Peetwo]

Senator Rex on the OneSKY warpath...  

From 'that man' Higgins in the Oz :

Auditor blasts OneSKY blowouts

12:00amEAN HIGGINS

The public expenditure watchdog has issued a damning review of the ambitious $1.5bn One­SKY project.

---

Audit office lets fly at air-traffic overhaul

The public expenditure watchdog has issued a damning review of the ambitious $1.5 billion One­SKY project designed to integrate the nation’s military and civilian air-traffic-control and navigation systems, warning it is running alarmingly late and risks not delivering value for money.

The Australian National Audit Office has found OneSKY, a joint venture between Defence and government-owned Airservices Australia, is running almost 2½ years behind schedule, meaning more federal government money will be needed to keep ageing military air-traffic-control equipment going longer than planned.

The project was approved in 2014 but a final contract has not yet been signed. This is despite individual consultants having been paid up to $5000 a day — including former RAAF officer Harry Bradford, who was dubbed the “million-dollar man” for receiving that fee to negotiate on behalf of Airservices with French aerospace group Thales,

“The offer and negotiation process has been protracted, in part due to misalignment of customer-approval processes through two separate governance structures, but also due to Thales not yet producing an acceptable offer that represents value for money for Defence and Airservices,” ANAO reports.

South Australian senator Rex Patrick has called for an independent review and warned the government against signing the contract given OneSKY is now listed by the government as a “project of concern”.

“It’s incredible that the government is even contemplating signing a contract to move this project forward when it’s in the state that it is,” said Senator Patrick of the Nick Xenophon Team.

The project’s original initial operational capability, set for late next year, has been pushed back to mid-2022, and full operational capability from late 2022 to early 2025. In a report assessing the progress of large defence projects, ANAO says Defence’s contribution to the project cannot remain capped if it is to achieve its objectives from OneSKY, and the federal government will soon have to decide whether to dish out more money to rescue it.

It says Airservices and Defence have failed to co-operate ­efficiently because of “organisational differences” and that 1000 redundancies ordered by Airservices chief executive Jason Harfield gutted the cohort of top managers running it. - That sounds like a purge to me? 

“Delivery of (OneSKY) may be impacted by dependent Airservices and Defence organisational inefficiencies, driven by divergent goals, or lack of oversight and control,” ANAO says.

Among other identified risks, ANAO warns the project “may not satisfy the requirements for the Civil Aviation Safety Authority accreditation” and may not meet “security requirements”.

A spokeswoman for Airservices said yesterday the final contract with Thales was expected to be signed by the end of March. Mr Harfield declined to comment. Hmm...wonder why?

In the lead up to Senate Estimates and while on the subjects of Harfwit's ASA autocracy plus the ever decreasing OneSKY trough feeders fund ; I thought now might be a good time to start assessing where Harfwit is at with tackling the previous estimates QON...
See pages 27-28 of QON list here: https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Bus...mates/rrat
A couple of QON waiting for answers are interesting:

---

Overdue Yes
[*]Asked Of Airservices Australia
[*]Proof Hansard Page/Written Written
[*]Portfolio Question Number 480
[*]Question
The current CASR Regulations contain the obligation for the ARFFS to respond to any fire on the aerodrome whether it started in an aircraft or not. It is also a very firmly established practice for the past 20+ years that ARFFS will respond to any medical emergencies on the aerodrome. This has provided aerodrome users/owners with a significantly advanced level of safety.

It reduces the insurance premiums of the airport owners, tenants and users. It has been responsible for saving several very important buildings and installations on the airports.

It overcomes the very strict and likely to get stricter security access into the restricted airside environment.

It has most importantly directly saved many lives over that 20-year period.

It provides immediate response within the chain of survival that the State Ambulance services can due to workloads, security/access restrictions and the requirements for escort into the airside areas.

Questions:

1. Does Airservices Australia support the removal of this safety requirement from the new regulations?
   
2. What has changed to make saving peoples lives and property no longer the ARFFS role when they are obviously the most suitably located and qualified emergency service with full unrestricted access to the airside environments?
   
3. How does removing this vital function of the ARFFS meet the statement of expectations from Minister Chester that he requires a World Class ARFFS?
   

---

[*]Overdue Yes
[*]Asked Of Airservices Australia
[*]Proof Hansard Page/Written Written
[*]Portfolio Question Number 475
[*]Question
At the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee Estimates Hearing on the 23 October 2017, Airservices Australia were questioned about the continued use of non-CASA approved foams, and whether there is a national management plan to deal with the exposure to ARFFS firefighters to PFAS. At page 165 of the Proof Hansard Airservices Australia CEO Jason Harfield is recorded as stating Airservices Australia is currently reviewing its work health and safety controls:

Senator McCARTHY: A national management plan around dealing with PFAS? Mr Harfield: Yes. We have a national plan where we're going through preliminary site testing at all our locations, and they are underway. We just released last week the results for the Gold Coast for some off airport testing, and we continue to work with the Prime Minister and Cabinet PFAS task force for the whole-of-government approach, as well as, as mentioned before, continuing to review our work health and safety controls to ensure that they are as effective as possible.

Questions:

1. What controls are currently in place?
   
2. If PPE is your primary control, how and when is decontamination required?
   
3. who will be responsible for reviewing these controls?
   
4. When did this review begin?
   
5. In terms of the legacy of PFAS contamination, have you tested all ARFF fire grounds for PFAS?
   
6. Are firefighters still being exposed to PFAS when they train on the ARFFS fire grounds?
   
7. Is Airservices Australia resisting providing testing information to the firefighters union who have made four FOI Requests and are yet to be provided with the information requested?
   
8. Why is Airservices Australia not blood testing or health monitoring the firefighters for PFAS?
   
9. Why is Airservices Australia still using the non CASA approved foam at Darwin and Townsville? Is this a cost-saving measure that is putting the lives of firefighters, and the health of the community surrounding those fire grounds at risk?
   

---

[*]
TICK...TOCK BJ -

MTF....P2

[Peetwo]

Update: 07/02/18

From 'that man', via the Oz:

Fears of more delays in overhaul

12:00amEAN HIGGINS

The air traffic controllers union has expressed ­unease at delays in a program to integrate military and civilian airspace management.

---

The union representing air traffic controllers has expressed ­unease at further delays in the $1.5 billion OneSKY program to integrate military and civilian airspace management, warning the existing equipment has ­already “reached its use-by date”.

Civil Air also alleges Airservices Australia, which runs the ­nation’s air traffic control and navigation system and leads the OneSKY program, has largely shut out its representative from the planning process, which the union claims has deprived planners of practical input from serving air traffic controllers.

The concerns follow the revelation from The Australian yesterday that the Australian National Audit Office has determined the project is running nearly 2½ years behind schedule, and will not be fully operational until early 2025, instead of late 2022 as originally planned.

The joint project of Defence and federal government-owned Airservices has not yet even ­entered into a contract with the preferred lead contractor, French aerospace group Thales, despite millions being spent over the years on consultants.

While Airservices says a contract will be signed by the end of next month, the ANAO has warned that without it there is no guarantee the final completion date will not blow out further.

In September, airline passengers got a taste of the chaos breakdowns in the air traffic control system can produce, when Sydney airport suffered what Airservices called a “system software failure” and only a limited number of flights were able to land and depart. “There are concerns that the current equipment has reached its use-by date, and if it is blown out further, there would need to be measures put in to maintain its integrity, ” Civil Air’s executive secretary, Peter McGuane, told The Australian.

An Airservices spokeswoman said: “The current air traffic control system, Eurocat, continues to perform at the required standard to provide a safe and ­effective service for our customers, and there are support ­arrangements in place to ensure its safe operation through to 2024.”

Mr McGuane claimed Civil Air’s nominee to the OneSKY design planning sessions had been given the cold shoulder, told at some stages there was no need for him to attend because the project had moved into the “engineering phase”.

Airservices’ spokeswoman said the organisation “continues to work with staff from across Airservices, including experienced air traffic controllers, ­engineers and representatives from Civil Air”.

South Australian senator Rex Patrick, of the Nick Xenophon Team, has called on the federal government to establish an independent review of OneSKY before allowing the contract with Thales to be signed.

MTF...P2

[Peetwo]

Higgins lifts lid on the OneSKY trough fund -

Via that man & the Oz:

---

Flying off course: how OneSKY failed to launch



The federal public expenditure watchdog has delved into OneSKY and found it to be running grievously late, bursting at the budget seams, and in danger of not delivering value for money to either Defence or Airservices.

The Australian 12:00AM February 8, 2018


EAN HIGGINS
Reporter Sydney
@EanHiggins

In 2013, Jason Harfield was barely into his 40s and felt really proud of how far he had come since his days as a young knockabout air traffic controller who got his licence at the age of 20 in 1991.

He had risen through the ranks of Airservices Australia, making his last transmission as an operational controller in 2000 before moving into management.

He still remembers it.

“It was the last shift, it was about 8 o’clock at night, I was working the Perth inner sectors and my last transmission was ‘Hotel Yankee Delta roger continue descent to flight level 140’,’’ he recalled in an interview for an Airservices publication.

Thirteen years later, having known no other life than in the public sector with federal government-owned Airservices, which runs the country’s air traffic control and navigation system, Harfield found himself in the same league as big private sector executives, in his case in charge of a hugely ambitious new $1.5 billion project called OneSKY.

OneSKY would do something no other country had attempted: fully integrate the civilian and military air traffic management systems, bringing in state-of-the art equipment and tailoring it in a bespoke fashion to make it the most complex and high performing in the world.

In July 2012, Defence and Airservices announced they had reached agreement to procure a new joint air traffic management system which the then Airservices general manager ATC future systems, Nick King, said would “successfully harmonise civil and military air traffic management to deliver a wide range of benefits, including greater airspace efficiency, better investment in personnel and infrastructure, and seamless systems compatibility”.

In his LinkedIn profile in those days, Harfield heralded the importance of his role, and how it was exclusively his.


Airservices Australia's Chief Executive Jason Harfield at the organisation's headquarters in Canberra.

“I have the accountability for the leadership, acquisition and delivery of Airservices’ next-generation services and harmonised Australian Air Traffic Management system,” Harfield trumpeted on LinkedIn. “This role also has the responsibility of the Senior Responsible Owner.”

Harfield clearly loved it; he got to mix it up with the top executives from the preferred prime contractor, the massive French aerospace and defence systems company Thales. It would not be long before he would periodically fly to Paris, the City of Light, for discussions with the Thales high-flyers, accompanied by Airservices chairman (and former RAAF and Defence Forces chief) Angus Houston — one of several facts Airservices was not prepared to volunteer to The Australian, but which was revealed when the newspaper put in a freedom-of-information request.

Harfield knew his and his lieutenants’ limitations, both time-wise and in terms of skills. Rather than conduct the detailed negotiations with Thales himself or get his subordinates at Airservices to do so, he turned to an obscure group in Canberra, the International Centre for Complex Project Management, which calls itself a “not-for-profit” organisation.

One of the ICCPM consultants, a dashing former RAAF pilot turned high-level project management consultant, Harry Bradford — who was an old fly-boy mate of Houston’s back in the day — was engaged as lead negotiator, working towards a contract with Thales with a target signing date of October 2015. Harfield moved even higher up the management rank; the air traffic controller who as a kid liked planes became chief executive of Airservices.

At about the time of his appointment to the top job two years ago, one of Harfield’s media flacks told The Australian everything was going just hunky dory: “The OneSKY Australia program remains on track for completion in 2021. Work currently undertaken is within the approved budget.”

In fact, it’s all gone horribly pear-shaped. As revealed by The Australian this week, the federal public expenditure watchdog has delved into OneSKY and found it to be running grievously late, bursting at the budget seams, and in danger of not delivering value for money to either Defence or Airservices.

The Australian National Audit Office reported that OneSKY won’t even get near the 2021 completion target — full operational capability is tentatively put down for 2025, but even that remains in doubt because that contract with Thales was not signed in October 2015. In fact, it still has not been signed, though Airservices says it will be by the end of next month.

“The offer and negotiation process has been protracted, in part due to misalignment of customer approval processes through two separate governance structures, but also due to Thales not yet producing an acceptable offer that represents value for money for Defence and Airservices,” ANAO says. It notes that there is no way Defence will get what it wants out of OneSKY on its current budget, and it would need “a significant real cost increase” bailout from the federal government.

A big part of the problem, ANAO found, was that what Airservices and Defence were attempting had never been tried before, anywhere. “The joint civil-military acquisition originally intended to procure a largely commercial off-the-shelf (or military off-the-shelf) system; however, the only compliant and viable solutions tendered all required significant development and integration effort to deliver the specified capability.

“Furthermore, there are no similar civil-military air traffic management systems fielded elsewhere in the world.”



Australian Minister for Defence Marise Payne. Picture: AAP

Last August, Defence Minister Marise Payne and Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne placed Defence’s participation in OneSKY on the government’s Projects of Concern list. Payne’s office did not answer The Australian’s questionsabout OneSKY.

The cost blowouts and delays in OneSKY were headaches for Harfield, but that sort of thing is common in big projects, and as long as they can be kept below the radar they can be dealt with quietly through further budget allocations and just extending the timeline. The real problem here was that it was all exposed by whistleblowers.

There was at least one mole, clearly fairly senior, at Airservices, and possibly more, who leaked what was really going on, to this reporter and to senators on the committee responsible for grilling public aviation organisations at Senate estimates hearings.

One day in 2015 a big, solid envelope arrived in this reporter’s pigeonhole at work, with no return address. In it were confidential Airservices documents about OneSKY.

Among other things, they showed something Harfield’s flacks had refused to divulge when The Australian had asked: the total expected cost of the project, over the course of its operation and allowing for inflation. It was $1.5bn, about twice what had been touted by industry estimates.

Airservices immediately moved into damage control and containment mode, calling on the Australian Federal Police to investigate the leak and try to find the culprit. This newspaper got a threatening letter from the AFP, but by that time had already published the most juicy elements of the leaked documents. The police did not pursue this reporter ­further.

It is instructive to note that if the federal government’s proposed foreign interference laws are enacted as they are currently drafted, the risk of publishing material from those sorts of documents in the future could be prohibitive. Just possessing such documents would be a crime, which means this reporter and the senators who also received the unsolicited leaked material would be criminals from the moment the envelopes arrived in their mailboxes, and if prosecuted they could be jailed for up to 15 years.

While there are some defences for journalists, veteran media lawyer Robert Todd has warned that the onus of proof is on them, and the bar is high.

“The structure of the legislation is chilling in its nature, in the sense that making out a defence will be extremely difficult and fraught,” Todd says.

Another really sinister aspect of the proposed law, Todd says, is that the people who have the biggest interest in it are senior public servants, who would use it to try to suppress such leaks to protect themselves from embarrassing public exposure of their organisation’s failings. If the same sort of leak happened again with the proposed new laws in place, senior public servants such as Harfield could command the police to investigate journalists and senators with far greater effect.

There were also leaks that show what a cosy and lucrative little club the aerospace bureaucracy and consultancy world is.

In August 2015, senators from every political party on the rural and regional affairs and transport legislation committee fell over each other to interrogate Harfield about the revelations.



Harry Bradford at Adelaide Airport. Picture: Kelly Barnes.


It turned out that while Bradford was one of the ICCPM consultants, the chairman of ICCPM, Chris Jenkins, was at the time also the managing director of Thales Australia, the organisation Bradford was supposed to be negotiating with on behalf of Airservices.

“The perception of conflict of interest is all over this,” said Labor senator Joe Bullock at the committee hearing.

The committee chairman, Liberal Bill Heffernan, described the arrangements as “incestuous” and said the whole thing “sounds dodgy”.

Harfield told the senators “it’s a small community”, but insisted it was not a case of “just being a web of mates”.

However, his problems were to get even worse.

Heffernan, with Labor support, decided to sic the ANAO on to the dealings between Airservices and ICCPM, and later more generally on to the administration of the OneSKY project.

That, in turn, revealed a lot.

In 2016 the ANAO tabled a report finding that a lack of probity, competitive tendering and cost control meant the organisation was not getting its money’s worth.

Among the findings, Airser­vices paid individual ICCPM consultants up to $5000 for an eight-hour day, and Bradford’s fee had been $1 million, earning him the sobriquet in the media of The Million Dollar Man.

“Overall, Airservices’ approach to contracting ICCPM to assist with the delivery of OneSKY Australia was ineffective in providing value-for-money outcomes,” ANAO determined.

Bradford feels the media focus on the consultants is misplaced — he says they took on the difficult job they were asked to do by the clients, did it well, and for normal commercial rates.

The attack was “unfair, asymmetric and unproductive and acts as a disincentive for capable people to do difficult things,” he says.

“I took all issues of substance to joint Defence and Airservices governance for decision-making and then operated in a manner consistent with direction I was given.”

Bradford this week decided to reveal to The Australian his own frustrations with the project, which he said led him to quit in late 2015. “Obstacles were many,” he says. “The requirements were complex and often the interests of Defence, Airservices and Thales diverged — as was expected.

“Defence was used to dealing with large and complex programs and their inputs and responses were usually coherent and well-considered; Airservices was an organisation that was very good at simultaneously operating and incrementally developing a running ATC system, but it was not practised in managing development projects of scale and complexity.”



To this was added Thales, a French company with a different culture, Bradford says.

While Thales had been good at the “low-risk process of progressive upgrade” of the existing air traffic control system, he says, the ambition of what Airservices and Defence were trying to do was another matter.

“The fixed price development of a fully integrated civil and military ATC system capable of addressing many evolving tech­nologies is a much bigger and very much more difficult undertaking,” Bradford says. After 18 months as lead negotiator, Bradford decided he couldn’t fix the impossible — there was no way, he estimated, that the project could attain the standard sought within the allocated ­budget.

“I was not prepared to continue being paid to work on a program that I felt was unlikely to achieve Defence’s and Airservices’ required outcomes,” he says.

Businessman and aviator Dick Smith has always believed it would never be possible, for an acceptable price, to fulfil the very different needs of the military and the civilian aviation industry through a single system.

“It’s like trying to build an airliner that will carry passengers and also have a bomb rack on,” he says.

Harfield has never made himself available to this reporter for telephone or face-to-face interviews about OneSKY, and would not answer questions including how much responsibility he took for the project’s problems.

But in terms of his LinkedIn posts and the utterances of his flacks, it looks like he now thinks he may have overestimated how much he was in charge of OneSKY after all.

Rather than the original claim “I have the accountability for the leadership, acquisition and delivery” of OneSKY, a couple of years ago, Harfield has changed this part of his LinkedIn profile to, “I had the accountability for the delivery” of the project.

When he was first grilled by the senators in August 2015 in the then role of acting chief executive, Harfield maintained his staunch insistence that when it came to OneSKY, he was their man, telling them he had been “leading and running the OneSKY Australia program”.

The following year, after the ANAO came down with one of its blistering reports on OneSKY, The Australian asked Harfield if he would deny he was the prime executive responsible for the project during what Heffernan called the “dodgy” period.

His flack responded:

“A number of Airservices and Defence executives have been jointly responsible for the One­SKY program.

“No one person within Airservices has prime responsibility for the introduction of OneSKY.”

---

Trouble afoot for MT & BJ me thinks...


MTF...P2

[Kharon]

Shambolic or Shameful?

“South Australian senator Rex Patrick, of the Nick Xenophon Team, has called on the federal government to establish an independent review of OneSKY before allowing the contract with Thales to be signed.”

What a jolly good idea and about time too. But only if the terms of reference can also be ‘independently’ constructed; we see far too many ‘reviews’ constrained within narrow, restrictive ToR. There also needs to be a sense of urgency imparted with the review conducted at a pace a top Fortune 500 company board would expect to see on a major expenditure adventure. It would be nice, for once, to see the government respond at a similar executive pace.

But, if I had my way; I’d start again, from scratch. I reckon it would be less expensive, quicker, cleaner, more transparent and deliver the system required if there was an ‘independent’ panel set up to do the analysis and decide which proposal is in the best interests of the nation. Clear, open and accountable, on a deadline.

A review of the One Sky project may shine a light into some dark corners, but will it see behind the walls? IMO there are some huge question mark hanging over the ASA board, competency for one of several, which cannot deny an answer for too much longer. Then there are the serious matters attending Halfwit's governance of the ASA, particularly in relation to not only One Sky, but of the whole shooting match. Few would deny it is a shambles.

ASA is a monopoly, with a licence to print money; where has the potential profit gone?

A review is a good idea; bringing in the ANAO, ASIO and the Federal police is a much better notion. At very least, a forensic examination of the entire ASA shambles would clear the water, which has become foetid. As ‘Civil Air’ point out, the clock is ticking.  

Gold star and a Choc frog for That man ‘Iggins. I wonder how he’ll treat the ruck at the Angus bus stop. Game on? You bet.

Toot toot.

[Peetwo]

Higgins lifts lid on the OneSKY trough fund -

Via that man & the Oz:

---

Flying off course: how OneSKY failed to launch



The federal public expenditure watchdog has delved into OneSKY and found it to be running grievously late, bursting at the budget seams, and in danger of not delivering value for money to either Defence or Airservices.

The Australian 12:00AM February 8, 2018


EAN HIGGINS
Reporter Sydney
@EanHiggins

In 2013, Jason Harfield was barely into his 40s and felt really proud of how far he had come since his days as a young knockabout air traffic controller who got his licence at the age of 20 in 1991.

He had risen through the ranks of Airservices Australia, making his last transmission as an operational controller in 2000 before moving into management.

He still remembers it.

“It was the last shift, it was about 8 o’clock at night, I was working the Perth inner sectors and my last transmission was ‘Hotel Yankee Delta roger continue descent to flight level 140’,’’ he recalled in an interview for an Airservices publication.

Thirteen years later, having known no other life than in the public sector with federal government-owned Airservices, which runs the country’s air traffic control and navigation system, Harfield found himself in the same league as big private sector executives, in his case in charge of a hugely ambitious new $1.5 billion project called OneSKY.

OneSKY would do something no other country had attempted: fully integrate the civilian and military air traffic management systems, bringing in state-of-the art equipment and tailoring it in a bespoke fashion to make it the most complex and high performing in the world.

In July 2012, Defence and Airservices announced they had reached agreement to procure a new joint air traffic management system which the then Airservices general manager ATC future systems, Nick King, said would “successfully harmonise civil and military air traffic management to deliver a wide range of benefits, including greater airspace efficiency, better investment in personnel and infrastructure, and seamless systems compatibility”.

In his LinkedIn profile in those days, Harfield heralded the importance of his role, and how it was exclusively his.


Airservices Australia's Chief Executive Jason Harfield at the organisation's headquarters in Canberra.

“I have the accountability for the leadership, acquisition and delivery of Airservices’ next-generation services and harmonised Australian Air Traffic Management system,” Harfield trumpeted on LinkedIn. “This role also has the responsibility of the Senior Responsible Owner.”

Harfield clearly loved it; he got to mix it up with the top executives from the preferred prime contractor, the massive French aerospace and defence systems company Thales. It would not be long before he would periodically fly to Paris, the City of Light, for discussions with the Thales high-flyers, accompanied by Airservices chairman (and former RAAF and Defence Forces chief) Angus Houston — one of several facts Airservices was not prepared to volunteer to The Australian, but which was revealed when the newspaper put in a freedom-of-information request.

Harfield knew his and his lieutenants’ limitations, both time-wise and in terms of skills. Rather than conduct the detailed negotiations with Thales himself or get his subordinates at Airservices to do so, he turned to an obscure group in Canberra, the International Centre for Complex Project Management, which calls itself a “not-for-profit” organisation.

One of the ICCPM consultants, a dashing former RAAF pilot turned high-level project management consultant, Harry Bradford — who was an old fly-boy mate of Houston’s back in the day — was engaged as lead negotiator, working towards a contract with Thales with a target signing date of October 2015. Harfield moved even higher up the management rank; the air traffic controller who as a kid liked planes became chief executive of Airservices.

At about the time of his appointment to the top job two years ago, one of Harfield’s media flacks told The Australian everything was going just hunky dory: “The OneSKY Australia program remains on track for completion in 2021. Work currently undertaken is within the approved budget.”

In fact, it’s all gone horribly pear-shaped. As revealed by The Australian this week, the federal public expenditure watchdog has delved into OneSKY and found it to be running grievously late, bursting at the budget seams, and in danger of not delivering value for money to either Defence or Airservices.

The Australian National Audit Office reported that OneSKY won’t even get near the 2021 completion target — full operational capability is tentatively put down for 2025, but even that remains in doubt because that contract with Thales was not signed in October 2015. In fact, it still has not been signed, though Airservices says it will be by the end of next month.

“The offer and negotiation process has been protracted, in part due to misalignment of customer approval processes through two separate governance structures, but also due to Thales not yet producing an acceptable offer that represents value for money for Defence and Airservices,” ANAO says. It notes that there is no way Defence will get what it wants out of OneSKY on its current budget, and it would need “a significant real cost increase” bailout from the federal government.

A big part of the problem, ANAO found, was that what Airservices and Defence were attempting had never been tried before, anywhere. “The joint civil-military acquisition originally intended to procure a largely commercial off-the-shelf (or military off-the-shelf) system; however, the only compliant and viable solutions tendered all required significant development and integration effort to deliver the specified capability.

“Furthermore, there are no similar civil-military air traffic management systems fielded elsewhere in the world.”



Australian Minister for Defence Marise Payne. Picture: AAP

Last August, Defence Minister Marise Payne and Defence Industry Minister Christopher Pyne placed Defence’s participation in OneSKY on the government’s Projects of Concern list. Payne’s office did not answer The Australian’s questionsabout OneSKY.

The cost blowouts and delays in OneSKY were headaches for Harfield, but that sort of thing is common in big projects, and as long as they can be kept below the radar they can be dealt with quietly through further budget allocations and just extending the timeline. The real problem here was that it was all exposed by whistleblowers.

There was at least one mole, clearly fairly senior, at Airservices, and possibly more, who leaked what was really going on, to this reporter and to senators on the committee responsible for grilling public aviation organisations at Senate estimates hearings.

One day in 2015 a big, solid envelope arrived in this reporter’s pigeonhole at work, with no return address. In it were confidential Airservices documents about OneSKY.

Among other things, they showed something Harfield’s flacks had refused to divulge when The Australian had asked: the total expected cost of the project, over the course of its operation and allowing for inflation. It was $1.5bn, about twice what had been touted by industry estimates.

Airservices immediately moved into damage control and containment mode, calling on the Australian Federal Police to investigate the leak and try to find the culprit. This newspaper got a threatening letter from the AFP, but by that time had already published the most juicy elements of the leaked documents. The police did not pursue this reporter ­further.

It is instructive to note that if the federal government’s proposed foreign interference laws are enacted as they are currently drafted, the risk of publishing material from those sorts of documents in the future could be prohibitive. Just possessing such documents would be a crime, which means this reporter and the senators who also received the unsolicited leaked material would be criminals from the moment the envelopes arrived in their mailboxes, and if prosecuted they could be jailed for up to 15 years.

While there are some defences for journalists, veteran media lawyer Robert Todd has warned that the onus of proof is on them, and the bar is high.

“The structure of the legislation is chilling in its nature, in the sense that making out a defence will be extremely difficult and fraught,” Todd says.

Another really sinister aspect of the proposed law, Todd says, is that the people who have the biggest interest in it are senior public servants, who would use it to try to suppress such leaks to protect themselves from embarrassing public exposure of their organisation’s failings. If the same sort of leak happened again with the proposed new laws in place, senior public servants such as Harfield could command the police to investigate journalists and senators with far greater effect.

There were also leaks that show what a cosy and lucrative little club the aerospace bureaucracy and consultancy world is.

In August 2015, senators from every political party on the rural and regional affairs and transport legislation committee fell over each other to interrogate Harfield about the revelations.



Harry Bradford at Adelaide Airport. Picture: Kelly Barnes.


It turned out that while Bradford was one of the ICCPM consultants, the chairman of ICCPM, Chris Jenkins, was at the time also the managing director of Thales Australia, the organisation Bradford was supposed to be negotiating with on behalf of Airservices.

“The perception of conflict of interest is all over this,” said Labor senator Joe Bullock at the committee hearing.

The committee chairman, Liberal Bill Heffernan, described the arrangements as “incestuous” and said the whole thing “sounds dodgy”.

Harfield told the senators “it’s a small community”, but insisted it was not a case of “just being a web of mates”.

However, his problems were to get even worse.

Heffernan, with Labor support, decided to sic the ANAO on to the dealings between Airservices and ICCPM, and later more generally on to the administration of the OneSKY project.

That, in turn, revealed a lot.

In 2016 the ANAO tabled a report finding that a lack of probity, competitive tendering and cost control meant the organisation was not getting its money’s worth.

Among the findings, Airser­vices paid individual ICCPM consultants up to $5000 for an eight-hour day, and Bradford’s fee had been $1 million, earning him the sobriquet in the media of The Million Dollar Man.

“Overall, Airservices’ approach to contracting ICCPM to assist with the delivery of OneSKY Australia was ineffective in providing value-for-money outcomes,” ANAO determined.

Bradford feels the media focus on the consultants is misplaced — he says they took on the difficult job they were asked to do by the clients, did it well, and for normal commercial rates.

The attack was “unfair, asymmetric and unproductive and acts as a disincentive for capable people to do difficult things,” he says.

“I took all issues of substance to joint Defence and Airservices governance for decision-making and then operated in a manner consistent with direction I was given.”

Bradford this week decided to reveal to The Australian his own frustrations with the project, which he said led him to quit in late 2015. “Obstacles were many,” he says. “The requirements were complex and often the interests of Defence, Airservices and Thales diverged — as was expected.

“Defence was used to dealing with large and complex programs and their inputs and responses were usually coherent and well-considered; Airservices was an organisation that was very good at simultaneously operating and incrementally developing a running ATC system, but it was not practised in managing development projects of scale and complexity.”



To this was added Thales, a French company with a different culture, Bradford says.

While Thales had been good at the “low-risk process of progressive upgrade” of the existing air traffic control system, he says, the ambition of what Airservices and Defence were trying to do was another matter.

“The fixed price development of a fully integrated civil and military ATC system capable of addressing many evolving tech­nologies is a much bigger and very much more difficult undertaking,” Bradford says. After 18 months as lead negotiator, Bradford decided he couldn’t fix the impossible — there was no way, he estimated, that the project could attain the standard sought within the allocated ­budget.

“I was not prepared to continue being paid to work on a program that I felt was unlikely to achieve Defence’s and Airservices’ required outcomes,” he says.

Businessman and aviator Dick Smith has always believed it would never be possible, for an acceptable price, to fulfil the very different needs of the military and the civilian aviation industry through a single system.

“It’s like trying to build an airliner that will carry passengers and also have a bomb rack on,” he says.

Harfield has never made himself available to this reporter for telephone or face-to-face interviews about OneSKY, and would not answer questions including how much responsibility he took for the project’s problems.

But in terms of his LinkedIn posts and the utterances of his flacks, it looks like he now thinks he may have overestimated how much he was in charge of OneSKY after all.

Rather than the original claim “I have the accountability for the leadership, acquisition and delivery” of OneSKY, a couple of years ago, Harfield has changed this part of his LinkedIn profile to, “I had the accountability for the delivery” of the project.

When he was first grilled by the senators in August 2015 in the then role of acting chief executive, Harfield maintained his staunch insistence that when it came to OneSKY, he was their man, telling them he had been “leading and running the OneSKY Australia program”.

The following year, after the ANAO came down with one of its blistering reports on OneSKY, The Australian asked Harfield if he would deny he was the prime executive responsible for the project during what Heffernan called the “dodgy” period.

His flack responded:

“A number of Airservices and Defence executives have been jointly responsible for the One­SKY program.

“No one person within Airservices has prime responsibility for the introduction of OneSKY.”

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Comment from Sandy:

Alexander

Ean is onto them. Previous governments thought to create these ‘independent’ Commonwealth corporates like AirServices to reduce Minister’s responsibility and to reduce governance costs of certain regulatory and service provisions. They were even touted as Government Business Enterprises before their embarrassing incompetence and massive fee gouging became evident. The mandarins took to these new structures like ducks to water because they had the perfect excuse to decouple from Public Service pay rates because now they were outside the PS and could go for ‘commercial’ rates. 

What a sick joke, what was supposed to be more efficient costs us all dearly. OneSky was doomed from the start and will never live up to the Harfield vision. Alex in the Rises.

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Trouble afoot for MT & BJ me thinks...

Also via the Oz:

Airways overhaul a futile mission


12:00amEAN HIGGINS

A leading consultant on the OneSKY air traffic control program quit when he realised it was impossible to achieve within budget.

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Air traffic control overhaul ‘impossible within budget’

A former RAAF test pilot dubbed “The Million Dollar Man” for his consultancy role on the $1.5 billion OneSKY air traffic control program has revealed he quit the project when he realised it would be impossible to achieve the ­objectives of Airservices Australia and Defence within the allocated budget.

Harry Bradford has broken his silence to tell The Australian that government-owned Airservices, which runs the nation’s civilian air traffic management and navigation system, was not cut out, at least a few years ago, to manage a highly ambitious project such as OneSKY.

He said the objectives of OneSKY were “brilliantly conceived” and the government should “keep the faith”, but the project would “cost what it will cost” and politicians “will therefore have to find the funds to achieve this outcome”.

Mr Bradford’s comments follow The Australian’s exposure this week of the Australian National Audit Office’s damning review of OneSKY, which seeks to integrate civilian and military air traffic control into a single system more advanced than any in the world.

ANAO determined the project was running at least 2½ years late, might not deliver value for money, suffered from conflicting management styles and goals ­between Airservices and Defence, and would need a further cash ­injection if it were to achieve its objectives.

Mr Bradford, who was ­engaged as lead negotiator by Airservices early in the project to work towards a contract with the preferred prime contractor, French aerospace and defence system group Thales, said he and other consultants worked hard for standard commercial consulting rates of pay, and achieved some successes, but eventually realised the brief was impossible to fulfil.

“Viewed against programs of similar scale and complexity, most experienced program managers would agree that the probability of achieving the stakeholders’ cost, schedule and capability expectations was zero,” Mr Bradford said. “Defence was used to dealing with large and complex programs, and their inputs and responses were usually coherent and well-considered; Airservices was an organisation that was very good at simultaneously operating and ­incrementally developing a running air traffic control system, but it was not practiced in managing development projects of scale and complexity.”

After 18 months as lead negotiator, Mr Bradford quit in October 2015. “I had formed the view that the negotiations were frustrated,” he said. “I was not prepared to continue being paid to work on a program that I felt was unlikely to achieve Defence’s and Airservices’ required outcomes.”

Mr Bradford had a distinguished air force career, including flying 270 combat missions as a bomber pilot in Vietnam, and as an instructor and test pilot, and was awarded the Air Force Cross.

After leaving the RAAF Mr Bradford worked in a variety of senior management roles in aerospace, including for Hawker de Havilland, British Aerospace and BAE Systems Australia.

MTF...P2