[Peetwo]

EWH catching up on Sic'em Rex and McDolittle spray - 

Via the Yaffa:

Senator Susan McDonald makes a point at the RRAT senate estimates hearing on 14 February 2021. (still from Parliament House feed)

CASA Culture cops Broadside in Senate Estimates


21 February 2022

The culture of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority came under fire in senate estimates in mid February after an operator provided information to Senator Susan McDonald outlining dealings with CASA investigators.

The operator, from Orange in NSW, has been subjected to investigations for three years after being accused of improperly permitting his aircraft to be used on commercial flights. According to McDonald, the operator should have had all enforcement actions cleared in December 2021, but instead a new investigation was opened in June that year and none of enforcement action was lifted.

McDonald, chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport (RRAT), was clearly incensed over the information she had been given and directed her anger at CASA Director of Aviation Safety and CEO Pip Spence.

"I want to give you the tools to say to the culture of your organisation: enough! This is no longer acceptable, because we're now in this perfect storm of having no pilots, no LAMEs; regional aviation is on its knees," a clearly passionate McDonald said.

"The bits that particularly trouble me, and there are a lot, is the use of ex-police officers to hound and bully and harrass, not only this guy, but the people he does business with. There is allegations that they [the officers] told people to sign statements concerning this guy and his business, and if they don't sign them, they will be charged with obstructing an investigation, and I've heard that over and over, and I can give you the name[s] of the investigators.

"If the culture of what is going on in CASA, particularly during COVID, particularly with LAMEs, particularly in regional Australia, this is appalling and CASA should be immediately disbanded if you can't get to the bottom of this ... and it is again your legal department."

South Australian Senator Rex Patrick took his cue from McDonald and zeroed in on Spence, hammering the line that CASA is over-burdening the general aviation industry.

"You are attacking our aviation industry, driving them into the ground," he told Spence. "The will be no safety incidents because there will be no aircraft, and this parliament has expressed a really clear view that you need to take into consideration the ability for us to grow our general aviation back ... and you're not doing that.

Spence tried to explain that CASA was committed to general aviation, which drew cries of "platitudes" from Patrick, forcing Senator Bridget McKenzie to intervene calling for civility and respect for Spence. It did not deter Patrick, who called for CASA people who have transgressed the rules to be named in public.

"We have a situation where this happens again and again and again," he reiterated. "And there's an immunity that sits behind you as a CEO. If your officers are doing the right thing they won't have any difficulty being named, and if they're doing the wrong thing they ought to be named as well. People need to understand who these people are that are basically attacking our general aviation industry."

Pip Spence responded by saying she thought the majority of the people at CASA were trying to do the right thing.

"I understand what you're saying," she said. "but I also want to stand up for the organisation that I work for and there are many people who are incredibly passionate about aviation who work in CASA, and while I know people hear stories about people who are not doing the right thing, but the vast majority of the people who work in CASA are committed to aviation."

The reply satiated neither Patrick nor McDonald.

"So how do we get to the situation that we get to? Patrick asked, with McDonald following up with "And why does nothing ever happen to the people doing the wrong thing?"

Senator Patrick then asked CASA how many of their people had been fired as a result of over-reach. It was a question that Spence elected to take on notice.

"I suspect it's none," Patrick retorted. "Maybe you can also give us the number of people that have been subject to administrative action."

Senator McDonald summed up the RRAT committees concerns over the culture within the regulator.

"I wish you luck, because I think your culture in your organisation is rotten, rotten," she said, "And if your investigators and the rest of your staff lived in the regions and worked with these pilots and they weren't all obsessed with, you know, focusing on Qantas, Virgin and the big end of town and understood what it was like to operate in a regional business in a regional place under the extraordinary pressures that we've put them through through regulation you might have half a chance."

At the beginning of the hearing, McDonald expressed her respect for Spence and said she believed that Spence had done a "terrific job" as CEO of CASA in the short time she had been in the job. It was an opinion that she reinforced in her closing remarks at the estimates session.

"You are doing a great job, though," she told Spence directly. "Everyone in the industry tells me so. Go with that happy thought."

MTF...P2