[Peetwo]

P2;

"If 4D was actually sincere about the above statement then you would think that he would have responded by accompanying the AAA MR with a presser from his own office?? But for some reason that didn't occur".

Very good pick up P2. Well done. Pollies love positive Pressers. Perhaps he saw that there was a risk he may have to shelve out money, hence his forgoing some PR? Or maybe he was busy at the hair salon that day getting his todger trimmed and primed for another men's urinal selfie shot? And that's about the truth of it isn't it? This der-brain Politician hasn't got a clue. He accepts a report, shakes someone's hand, twerps it out on Twatter (probably along with a photo of his perfect hair and manscaped body), files the report on Barmyboys top shelf under the heading 'More IOS Complaints' and leaves it there to gather dust for the next half a century.

The big book of none answers.

P2 ...”makes you want to vomit because it is pure unadulterated bollocks...”

Not just wanted to – bloody well near did.  New rule – I ain’t going to read any more ministerial responses to serious reports. Not worth the time, effort or aggravation.  So ducking predictable; there must be a big book, tucked away somewhere for idiot Polly’s. The big book of PC none answers. Published as ‘How to tell lies, do nothing and get away with it’.

Minion – “Minister, Sir; sorry to interrupt your stylist, but the peasants are revolting”.

Minister - (languid like) “Yes, they are; (yawn) what is it this time?

Minion – “That airport crowd have produced another report; it is factual and it seems the aerodrome infrastructure is collapsing around the aviation industries ears; its serious I’m afraid”.

Minister – “Look here Minion, I can’t have my stylist disturbed every time there is another aviation crisis; this is a very expensive, sensitive artist here, making sure that every single hair is immaculate, and the tailor is going to be late; I may get photographed later (or do it myself); this is important stuff, my image must be preserved”. (Sigh).

Minion – “ I am aware of that Sir; but, this does seem to require a response; in fact it seems quite urgent, there’s a fair few of ‘em in the lobby and they seem a little irate”.

Minister – (snaps irritated) “Just look in the ducking big book; the airports page is just before assholes; look down the index, find the nearest listed complaint to the latest; go to that page and print out the ‘official’ response; get that to the media people and make sure they use the picture of me looking appropriately concerned; then distribute it”.  Got that?. Good, now bugger off – I am really busy here.

Minion – “Yes Sir; Oh, I love it when you get all decisive, may I take your picture for my children?”

Minister – (bored) I suppose so, but make sure you get my best side.

How many more of these say nothing, time buying, trite, work-shopped answers do we have to read through? FFS these clowns are just doing a little as possible, ensuring they rock no boats; biding their time until the next election, making sure that the indecent pension and perks increase. It is absolutely ducking disgusting.

Toot, toot – bloody toot.

Absolutely spot on GD, TB & Ferryman, except I'd expand on the title somewhat...

  ...none answers for morally & financially bankrupt governments...

...Or reference the 89.9 million pot of money the ATSB was given to fund and manage a far too narrowly scoped MH370 SIO search, yet Hoodlum begs poor in the recent ATSB AR:

The Australian Transport Safety Bureau will scale back its non-fatal accident investigations. (AAP)

The chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau has outlined plans to constrain the scope of non-fatal air investigations.
Source:
AAP
20 Oct 2016 - 11:10 AM  UPDATED 20 Oct 2016 - 11:10 AM

The government agency overseeing air safety in Australia says it will have to scale back the number of non-fatal accidents it investigates because of limited resources.

Australian Transport Safety Bureau chief commissioner Greg Hood says his organisation will continue to investigate most accidents and serious incidents involving the travelling public.

But he wants to be more efficient, by becoming more "data-driven".

In so doing, the bureau will be able to more selectively allocate its limited resources to investigating those accidents and incidents that have the greatest potential for improving safety, Mr Hood writes in the ATSB's annual report.

"If there is no obvious public safety benefit to investigating an accident, the ATSB is less likely to conduct a complex, resource-intensive investigation."

Mr Hood says the bureau endeavours to investigate all fatal accidents involving VH-registered powered aircraft in Australia subject to the resources available and what can be learnt from the incident.

"But we will need to carefully consider the resources we allocate to investigations into general aviation fatal accidents and constrain the scope of investigations into non-fatal accidents in this sector," he writes.

There were not many safety benefits in investigating incidents which have obvious contributing factors, such as unauthorised low-level flying or visibly flying into poor weather.

"Instead, educating pilots on the dangers of high-risk activity is where we will refocus our efforts, with an emphasis on using social media."

Mr Hood says technology is already having an influence on his bureau's work, especially given the use of drones.

He notes pizza delivery using the technology is reportedly imminent

However there is a solution to all this that would top up the aviation coffers and do away with the trough feeding parasites. Reference a comment by 'a snivelling, miserable coward' from UK online publication 'the Register':

50 tech jobs to go at AirServices Australia

AirServices Australia is set to axe around 50 jobs across its IT department as part of sweeping cuts that could see 900 positions cut. The cuts are part of the Accelerate program, the ABC reports, and have raised concerns of safety from pilots and AirServices air traffic controllers. AirServices was not immediately available …

Something's not right.


According to an ASA PR droid, "...would only affect back office and technical staff."
Umm, clerical types aside (and they're no less important) but the 'technical staff' are those that keep the stuff running so the controllers can do their jobs.

They say that they're about to pull the plug on 22%
of their existing staff, so either:-

a) ASA management were asleep at the wheel and allowed the staffing to get totally out of hand over the last x years so they are presently severely overstaffed and need to be cut, or
b) There's going to be a significant reduction in service and system reliability if you pull that number of 'support' / tech staff.

Given that of the 4000 employees, 1000 are controllers who are supposedly 'quarantined' from the cuts, this really means that they're cutting 900 from the remaining 3000 employees, or 30% of the remaining staff.

With a great amount of regret, I can foresee services, and therefore safety, being impacted by radar / radio / IT / etc failures which will be put down to "lack of support staff" when it happens (and I suspect it will happen).

Either way, ASA management have some explaining to do.

AC for much the same reason as the previous poster.

---

Re: Something's not right.
Perhaps they're getting the whole thing ready to be privatized?

ASA and quite a few of its previous incarnations at least as far back as the early '90s have looked at Canada as a similar ATC situation to the one we have here - turn Oz 90° clockwise and you'll see the similarity. Melbourne/Cairns is quite a lot like Vancouver/Ottawa. Most of the high density traffic runs along one rather long edge with lots of nothing elsewhere (sorry, Perth).

Canada turned private in 1996 as Nav Canada, a privately run, not-for-profit corporation. They have gained a great reputation for themselves. This quote is from Forbes.com in Feb this year:-

Nav Canada runs one of the safest systems in the world, and it has won three International Air Transport Association (IATA) Eagle Awards as the world’s best ATC provider. Nav Canada is a “global leader in delivering top-class performance,” says the IATA. Nav Canada has developed new technologies that it exports around the world.
Remember when Australia was a leader in world aviation circles?

The UK turned private in 2000 as NATS, a public-private partnership involving the government (49%) and others. My spies tell me that they don't think much has changed there, despite the privatisation.

If we did go private, we could do worse than look at the Canadian system.

AC as seems to be the tradition here...

 
But that won't happen too much political risk for poor old Dazzling Dazza & Barnbaby in such ridiculous proposals - FDS...

Expanding on the current theme, via Planetalking today :

ATSB reminds us that cost cutting driven mediocrity is Govt policy
A half baked NBN, a crippled ABC, and an underfunded air safety investigator are examples of ideological neglect of public services

Ben Sandilands


A Greg Hood happy snap from our AAP service.
Commentary

This morning’s kerfuffles in the media over the realisation that the NBN is generating community concerns over its unreliability and pathetic download speeds are just one of the dots to connect when it comes to a breakdown in the standards of public services.
Take this repeat of an SBS story from last month by the aptly named PAIN_NET air safety forum about Australia’s transport safety investigator, the ATSB, having to restrict its scope because of funding cutbacks.

Despite the efforts by the chief commissioner of the ATSB, Greg Hood, to put the best possible construction on the the funding destruction of the agency, there are obvious risks to its charter when it tries to decide prior to an inquiry that there is nothing worthwhile in the causes or circumstances of an accident or incident that would contribute to improved aviation safety outcomes.

In terms of logic, its a course of action that could prove fatally flawed, but the real charter of public bodies in Australia under Labor and its faithful Coalition government successors, is to cut the spending back to levels that will bring them, sweating blood and the discarded talents of terminated experts, to the edge of collapse.

It’s why we have an ABC that can’t correctly pronounce the names of country towns, successfully cue sound and vision on live broadcasts, and has no idea when it is being misled by a PR campaign into spruiking some ridiculous assertions affecting the health or nutrition of its audience. As well as an NBN which is designed specifically to fail to provide world class broadband speeds to users, including bandwidth hungry entrepreneurs or medical services.

This is the ABC that went along with the supermoon hysteria, and refused for hours to acknowledge that Tim Peake wasn’t in fact the first British astronaut, when that honour belonged to the forgotten feminine and apparently lower class Helen Sharman.
(The ABC these days will report anything without checking it seems. None of this ‘truthiness’ is to be tolerated by the increasingly narrow narrow focused national broadcaster in these post-truth times.)

The only thing agile and innovative about the policy settings successive Australian governments have pursued with public service entities, including transport safety bodies, is to discourage or hunt down and ‘kill’ their employment of talented public minded people.

Where will this lead us? To a roll back of pure food acts, the total safety deregulation of the trucking industry (which appears to have been largely achieved), the closure of superfluous publicly owned media, or to a great big stinking and bloody plane crash.  This isn’t a Labor V Coalition rant, it’s a real set of questions about public administration settings right across the political spectrum, and the rot has been spreading for years.

In reply Dan Dair asks some valid QON

Dan Dair
November 17, 2016 at 1:01 pm
Ben,
I thought,
(& I may be completely mistaken in this assumption)
that Australia had a duty to the nation but also to the worldwide aviation community
incorporated into the ‘membership’ of ICAO.?

In order to support its continued membership of this world community,
Australia must comply with its minimum standards.

You have previously noted a number of occasions when the ATSB or CASA have failed to reach these standards.

Lack of public funding for Australias’ presiding authorities is domestic political & electoral issue. What do ‘the people’ actually want to be achieved ‘in their name’.?

However, fulfilling its international treaty obligations is more than a domestic issue, it is surely a legal requirement.?

Without at least a cursory examination of the facts, how can any authoritative body ‘know’ whether something is worthy of investigation.?

How can an authority make that ‘judgement-call’ at all & still comply with international law or protocol.?

Is Australia about to lose its ‘1st world’ status in aviation because of funding-cuts.?
How will Australians react to the international body regarding their nations safety oversight as no-better than central Africa or South America.???

How will the politicians defend or justify themselves, if/when such a downgrading occurred.?

---

& JW answers the DD honest but naïve QON...


JW (aka James Wilson)
November 17, 2016 at 2:13 pm

Dan,
A bit of background: Australia is a signatory to the Convention on International Civil Aviation, commonly known as the Chicago Convention. The Chicago Convention is given legal effect in Australia by the Air Navigation Act 1920. ICAO issues international standards and recommended practices and procedures under Article 37 of the Chicago Convention and publishes them as Annexes to the Convention. States that are signatories to the Convention are expected to abide by the standards and recommended practices published in the Annexes, however, where a State finds it impracticable to comply, Article 38 of the Convention allows the State to notify ICAO of the difference. The difference is then published as a supplement to the respective Annex.

In short, a country can choose not to follow all of ICAO’s standards and recommended practices, provided it notifies ICAO of the difference. Most countries have various notified differences. Australia has more than most, many of which are northing more than minor changes in definitions or wording, but some of the differences are more contentious.

In the case of Annex 13, contracting States are required to investigate all accidents and serious incidents. However, Australia has notified a difference that it may not institute an investigation into some accidents or serious incidents. The difference states that the decision on “whether a particular domestic accident will be investigated will depend on resources and the likely benefit to future safety, particularly in the general aviation sector”.

Australia has therefore covered its legal requirements by notifying ICAO of the difference. The practical effect of that difference on air safety outcomes in Australia is obviously open to debate.

MTF...P2