Yesterday, 06:54 PM
The Last Minute Hitch: 16 May 2025
16 May 2025
– Steve Hitchen
AMROBA has thrown its support behind recognising foreign qualifications for engineers. It would have been surprising had they not given that AMROBA proposed it to CASA in the first place. The startling thing for me is that it has taken an existential engineer shortage for CASA to do this, when it probably should have been in place long ago. Have we been scared of a flood of foreign aviation engineers swamping the market and taking all the LAME jobs? How ludicrous is it that Australia has been reluctant to accept qualifications from the USA when 80% of the aircraft LAMEs work on were designed and built there? So although this is a proposal for a solution, I see it more as a correction. The solution still lies is sorting out our own training system so that it's not completely impractical for people to pursue aviation engineering as a career. That's the root cause of the engineer shortage that has led GA to the edge of a precipice, and although importing engineers may stop us from toppling over, only training our own will let us take a step back.
"..being Leader of the Opposition is a bit like getting a participation award.."
In Sussan Ley we have a pilot in command of the Liberal Party, leading to hope that maybe the Coalition will engage with the aviation community at some level. However, we've been here before: a situation where we expected having a pilot in a position of power would solve everything. Think of those aviators who headed-up CASA and how we thought everything would be hunky-dory with them at the wheel. Nothing changed, and the cynic in command of me is prepared for Sussan Ley to change very little as well. Right now, Ley has taken the stick of a Coalition that is completely barren not only of policy, but also of ideas. With a keystone policy of nuclear power that has been smacked down at the ballot box, the Coalition has some serious thinking to do, and even though Ley may still be logging hours in her Skylane, I don't believe aviation is going to be at the top of her fix-it list. Remember also that being Leader of the Opposition is a bit like getting a participation award: it says you tried really hard, but ultimately lost. The person with the power over us remains Catherine King, who starts her second term as minister. Her policies are clearly laid out in the aviation white paper, which is at least something we can fall back on given that King has made herself somewhat invisible in the aviation community since that tome was published. I can imagine she'll stay elusive until the Coalition gives her a reason to hoist her battle flag, and she won't be doing that unless the opposition come up with competitive policies on aviation ... or anything else for that matter.
This week I had cause to wonder what ever happened to CASA's GA Workplan 2.0. In November last year it was promised to us in "early 2025", and as we are already in the midst of the year, I began thinking we should have heard something by now. The answer returned to me was that it is almost ready, but the caretaker period mandatory after Albo declared the Federal Election stalled it. I found that an interesting response. The GA Workplan is not a legislative document, it's administrative, which means CASA can go ahead with the plan without recourse to the department. So why would caretaker mode interfere with it? It doesn't take a deerstalker hat and a Calabash pipe to work out that CASA had to wait to see who won the election to have any confidence the Workplan could proceed. The Workplan will be entwined with the ALP's aviation white paper and the minister's Statement of Expectations, two critical documents that would have been headed for the shredder if the Coalition took the chocolates on 3 May. As that didn't happen, the white paper stands and the next SoE is unlikely to vary greatly from the pre-election version. Consequently, GA Workplan 2.0 has cleared all hurdles and we should be seeing it in the next couple of weeks.
May your gauges always be in the green,
Hitch
16 May 2025
– Steve Hitchen
AMROBA has thrown its support behind recognising foreign qualifications for engineers. It would have been surprising had they not given that AMROBA proposed it to CASA in the first place. The startling thing for me is that it has taken an existential engineer shortage for CASA to do this, when it probably should have been in place long ago. Have we been scared of a flood of foreign aviation engineers swamping the market and taking all the LAME jobs? How ludicrous is it that Australia has been reluctant to accept qualifications from the USA when 80% of the aircraft LAMEs work on were designed and built there? So although this is a proposal for a solution, I see it more as a correction. The solution still lies is sorting out our own training system so that it's not completely impractical for people to pursue aviation engineering as a career. That's the root cause of the engineer shortage that has led GA to the edge of a precipice, and although importing engineers may stop us from toppling over, only training our own will let us take a step back.
"..being Leader of the Opposition is a bit like getting a participation award.."
In Sussan Ley we have a pilot in command of the Liberal Party, leading to hope that maybe the Coalition will engage with the aviation community at some level. However, we've been here before: a situation where we expected having a pilot in a position of power would solve everything. Think of those aviators who headed-up CASA and how we thought everything would be hunky-dory with them at the wheel. Nothing changed, and the cynic in command of me is prepared for Sussan Ley to change very little as well. Right now, Ley has taken the stick of a Coalition that is completely barren not only of policy, but also of ideas. With a keystone policy of nuclear power that has been smacked down at the ballot box, the Coalition has some serious thinking to do, and even though Ley may still be logging hours in her Skylane, I don't believe aviation is going to be at the top of her fix-it list. Remember also that being Leader of the Opposition is a bit like getting a participation award: it says you tried really hard, but ultimately lost. The person with the power over us remains Catherine King, who starts her second term as minister. Her policies are clearly laid out in the aviation white paper, which is at least something we can fall back on given that King has made herself somewhat invisible in the aviation community since that tome was published. I can imagine she'll stay elusive until the Coalition gives her a reason to hoist her battle flag, and she won't be doing that unless the opposition come up with competitive policies on aviation ... or anything else for that matter.
This week I had cause to wonder what ever happened to CASA's GA Workplan 2.0. In November last year it was promised to us in "early 2025", and as we are already in the midst of the year, I began thinking we should have heard something by now. The answer returned to me was that it is almost ready, but the caretaker period mandatory after Albo declared the Federal Election stalled it. I found that an interesting response. The GA Workplan is not a legislative document, it's administrative, which means CASA can go ahead with the plan without recourse to the department. So why would caretaker mode interfere with it? It doesn't take a deerstalker hat and a Calabash pipe to work out that CASA had to wait to see who won the election to have any confidence the Workplan could proceed. The Workplan will be entwined with the ALP's aviation white paper and the minister's Statement of Expectations, two critical documents that would have been headed for the shredder if the Coalition took the chocolates on 3 May. As that didn't happen, the white paper stands and the next SoE is unlikely to vary greatly from the pre-election version. Consequently, GA Workplan 2.0 has cleared all hurdles and we should be seeing it in the next couple of weeks.
May your gauges always be in the green,
Hitch