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AFAP supplementary submission - 

Via the GA inquiry submissions webpage: 44.1 Supplementary to submission 44 (PDF 1090 KB) 

Executive Summary and Recommendations


3. The AFAP believes that this inquiry is an opportunity to rethink and reform Australia’s aviation
regulations and regulator in a manner that achieves improved safety outcomes and efficiencies,
not only for the benefit of the Australian aviation sector but also for the wider community.

4. Many stakeholders have provided input to this inquiry critical of the regulator and regulations.
Many have included examples of negative outcomes supporting these criticisms too. There are
many common themes contained in these criticisms and examples that should be understood
holistically, so to aid the comprehension of the real and underlying contributing factors. In an
earlier submission, we referred to this as comprehending consistent problems as symptomproblems.
That submission can be referred to for greater explanation and detail.

5. It is apparent that regulatory comprehension and complexity are very common themes that
stakeholders continue to raise complaint about. Some express remedies to this through “wants”
of a complete revision and reform of the Civil Aviation Act (‘the Act’), or through the complete
replacement of Australia’s aviation regulations with those from the USA or New Zealand.

6. The AFAP believes that this type and level of reform are both unworkable and unnecessary.

7. The aviation regulator communicates that it has outcomes-based regulations however, the
problems of complexity and comprehension remain largely unresolved. The AFAP suggests that it
is disingenuous to consider regulations to be outcomes-based when they don’t communicate the
intent and safety objectives. Successful and efficient achievement of an outcome necessarily is a
function of stating, comprehending and working towards the objectives.

8. With this in mind, the AFAP suggests that the inclusion of the objectives of regulations in the
regulations is the missing facet of the so-called outcomes-based aviation regulations. We believe
that the introduction of this reform will greatly enhance the comprehension and reduce the
problem of complexity. We refer to this as the inclusion of regulatory-intent in the regulations.
This submission details this further.

9. Regarding ideas for a wholescale review of the Act, we instead envision that a simple and targeted
reform of the Civil Aviation Act is the best and only legislative reform required for the Act. We
suggest that this reform should aim to resolve the current lack of outcomes-focused regulatory
activity. In our view, an amendment to s9A of the Civil Aviation Act that focuses on safety systems
and outcomes will achieve the desired reform many stakeholders are impatient for. Section 9A of
the Act addresses the requirements for the regulator’s performance and functions, including what
it must consider in the development and promulgation of standards.

10. The AFAP specifically recommends:
a. The establishment of an aviation regulatory reform process that has an objective to
include articulation of safety objectives and regulatory-intent of aviation regulations
within the regulations.
b. The Civil Aviation Act be amended in a targeted manner to permanently bestow a legal
duty upon the regulator to develop and promulgate regulations with systemic and
outcomes focused objectives. Such a targeted amendment should be worded with an aim
to resolve the current lack of outcomes-focused regulatory activity.

11. The AFAP would like the committee and other stakeholders to consider that this inquiry, and
subsequent reform initiatives, will be at risk of failing to achieve meaningful reform outcomes if
realistic and workable solutions are not agreed and applied. It is essential that a meaningful
majority of stakeholders come to agreement on these matters so that targeted reform initiatives
can be developed and applied, and so this inquiry isn’t a wasted and pointless endeavour.

12. This submission includes examples of regulatory-intent and an amendment to the Civil Aviation
Act. We included these only to aid comprehension of the vision and concepts articulated. The
wording detailed in them should not be misinterpreted for fixed positions on the wording choice.

Plus:

Targeted Legislative Amendment

59. Occasionally various aviation stakeholders raise positions for a whole-of-Act review and
amendment. Unfortunately, such positions are more informative of the weight of frustrations for
the current regulatory state than they are for a useful civil aviation legislative reform. The AFAP
cautions against such broad and risk laden reform considerations as these could conceivably lead
to a multitude of unintended consequences. Instead, we suggest that the aviation community
and government consider that there is a significant degree of consistency of the issues raised by
most stakeholders and that these fall within the remit of s9A of the Act - Performance of Functions
(of CASA).

60. Much of the current and longstanding criticism can be summarised into matters such as:
inconsistent regulation application, confusing regulations, verbosity of regulations, and poor
alignment to how regulations need to operate in the practical operational environment (leading
to cost impost in some cases). All of which can be summarised as symptoms related to the
performance of CASA’s functions.

61. Thus, instead of contemplating broad and risky reforms to significant portions of the Act, the AFAP
suggests that it would be wiser, more efficient and effective to refine wants of broad Act reform
instead into a nuanced and targeted reform of s9A of the Act.

Amendment to the Civil Aviation Act

62. Section 9A of the Act sets out the performance and function priorities that CASA must regard and
consider, which includes that CASA must regard safety as the most important consideration. In 

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What does System of Safety mean?

65. During the process of socialising our proposed Act amendment with other stakeholders (since
early 2019), we have found it useful to propose a specific example with wording in which the
concept could take form. It has never been our intention to be fixed on the exact wording. Rather,
the example is only intended to assist others with the comprehension of the concept.

66. Despite our intent, a commonly raised issue by other stakeholders is the use of the terminology
“system of safety” in our proposed example Act amendment. Some stakeholders have suggested
that the inclusion of this terminology in the Act would also require the addition of a definition of
system-of-safety in the Act too. We draw attention to the fact that the Act already contains similar
terminology, and without definition of it. For example, section 9 states:

“CASA’s functions

(1) CASA has the function of conducting the safety regulation of the following, in
accordance with this Act and the regulations:
…

(g) conducting regular reviews of the system of civil aviation safety… … and to
promote the development and improvement of the system”
[Emphasis added]

67. ICAO documents also use this type of terminology without definition too. Doc 9859 (8.3.5.9):
“Performance-based regulations that are written in this manner require regulators to
have the skills and expertise to assess the performance of the system, rather than to
merely assess prescriptive compliance with the letter of the regulations.”
[Emphasis added]

68. The AFAP remains agnostic to the requirement for a definition of aviation safety systems or not,
however we do believe that the discussion on this point should be consistent and if stakeholders
believe our proposed amendment to the Act (in its current form) requires an accompanying Act
amendment to provide a definition, then these views should exist for the current wording in the
Act too.

69. We reiterate that the purpose of our proposed amendment to the Act is to achieve safety
outcomes that consider the civil aviation system in a holistic and practical manner. Considered
word choice may mean different words are selected but the AFAP requests readers to absorb the
concept rather that to focus upon exact word selection for now.

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