Drones, what drones?
Pick a quote any quote
- CASA Hansard is out: Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee(Senate-Friday, 27 October 2017)
Examples, via the @AuSenate
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Pick a quote any quote
- CASA Hansard is out: Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee(Senate-Friday, 27 October 2017)Examples, via the @AuSenate
:Quote:ACTING CHAIR: I want every Australian out there to hear this very clearly. If you do break CASA's rules, and you do fly your drone over a beach, a park, events or sports ovals, you would expect, if there's people around, that you will not be charged, Australia, because a One Nation staffer did not get charged. What's the difference?If there is a byline here it should be: "CASA consistently, inconsistent" -
Mr Carmody : It depends on the individual circumstances of the investigation.
ACTING CHAIR: Give me a clue what that actually means—the individual circumstances?
Mr Carmody : Individual circumstances are clear. It depends on firstly—that matter was made public. I saw the video. It depends on whether, for example, members of the public are injured, whether they are frightened, whether they complain; whether or not it looks like a deliberate error or merely an oversight. There are a range of people—if someone who is, for example, extremely well qualified and is a qualified drone operator and then breaks the rules, that would be different. So there are a range of circumstances.
ACTING CHAIR: What if they're a pilot?
Mr Carmody : Again, it depends. And I understand it this person is a pilot. This was the first time. Normally, unless there is something egregious, we will make a decision for an educative letter or a counselling letter. It will not make any difference whether it's a staffer or a member of a political party or anyone else.
Senator GALLACHER: Or a pilot.
Mr Carmody : Yes.
Senator GALLACHER: You can't be serious. The bloke knows the rules of aviation. He knows the risks posed by drones. He is aware of the law more than anybody else in this place. He's a pilot, for goodness sake. They're all talking about the potential threat that drones pose.
Mr Carmody : As I said, we have a very clear, coordinated enforcement mechanism. We apply it across the board for all penalties, including this one, for all offences. The cases are judged on their merits and a penalty is applied.
ACTING CHAIR: You are inconsistent—you being CASA.
Dr Aleck : The only other thing I'll say is that when we issue an infringement notice, which is the more serious response, as opposed to a counselling letter, which is more serious than an educative letter, we have to be able to be reasonably confident that if this matter were to be prosecuted there would be a successful prosecution. Because if a person elects not to pay the notice, just like a motor vehicle fine, they can go to court. So the evidence has to be there to substantiate to the claim. We do have any number of those cases where we believe that the evidence is sufficient to substantiate such a claim.
Senator STERLE: Let's come back to this one. The evidence was posted on Facebook and then the TV channels picked it up and ran it and what not. What more evidence did you need? If a drone fell out of the sky and bonked a politician on the head, I don't think too many people would be worried. It might even help some of them! But what more did you need in this case? Please explain to me. I've got this horrible feeling in my head that just because this person happens to work for One Nation they should be treated different than anyone else. You're making me bring the political stuff up here because I'm saying to all Australians go out there, break the laws, who cares? Just tell them you're a member of a political party and you'll get treated differently. Help me out. You're a lawyer.
Mr Carmody : I reiterate that the political affiliations of the individual didn't come into this.
Senator STERLE: Let me tell the rest of Australia who are listening out there that this sounds very stinky. If you were to lean on one of the bars here tonight at 6 o'clock and say, 'Listen brother, what do you reckon about this?' I don't think you're going to walk out of there with the answers that you expect that you're giving here in this committee. Let me run a few other things in front of you. I wrote to you, as Mr Carmody said, and you wrote back to me. I was asking for similar situations. I don't want to bore, Chair. 19 January 2015 was—what does AIN stand for?
Dr Aleck : Aviation infringement notice....
...Dr Aleck : I recognise that. Convenient as it would be to rely on video footage that appears on Facebook, forensically that's problematic. That's not a CASA invention. Don't think that we didn't investigate this, because in fact we did. We sought to get as much footage as we could, including a question to the individual for any footage that he happened to have. But the likelihood of getting that—
Senator STERLE: The pilot who knows the rules, or should do.
Dr Aleck : Yes. In any case, what we needed to be able to demonstrate was not just a video of someone flying something and then people in the frame; we're trying to identify circumstances in which we could show, in the video, or from evidence, testimony provided by the individuals involved, that the device was closer to them than it should have been. As I said, it looks like it was, but it wouldn't be very difficult for a defence attorney to say, 'Hang one—here's a photograph of this thing flying around. Here's a frame with people in it, but I don't see a frame with this thing flying around very close to another person. In fact, how do I know that this frame wasn't taken it at this point and this frame taken at that point?'
You and I might agree that it's pretty plain, but in order to prevail in a court you need to have at least that much evidence. That's evidence that we were unable to get because we couldn't get sufficient video from those who had it, and because those from whom we sought advice about if they were present and if they would be prepared to say that this thing came within less than 30 metres of where they were—we're still actually looking for that, but it's academic at this point. We weren't able to get that. We weren't able to obtain that evidence.
Dr Aleck : The first thing we'd have to do is identify who those people were. We were able to identify—
CHAIR: Listen, seriously. Come around, I'll put an hour into it for you. I'll identify who it was in the parliamentary wings here that were playing rugby that day, if you like. My question is, how many of those did you locate and interview?
Dr Aleck : We identified one person who was the closest to a likely infringement subject and we attempted to interview that person. We obtained some information from that person's office. It was a member of parliament.
Senator STERLE: Who was it? Tell us who the member of parliament was. I know who was on the Facebook video that was broadcasting out there. Who was the member of parliament?
Mr Carmody : While Dr Aleck is looking for the information, I make a point, if I may. For a similar event around the country, I would not invest significant investigative resources in interviewing 40 or 50 people for an event like this that did not result in a serious outcome. I don't have the resources to do that. If it resulted in a serious outcome, I would. If someone was injured, I would.
Senator STERLE: So you wait until something's happened?
Mr Carmody : I do not have the resources, for every drone incident—
Senator STERLE: You're consistent on this, Mr Carmody, because five months ago you sat in that seat and told us there's nothing to worry about because we haven't had an incident. So you're consistent. Wait until something goes wrong and then we'll panic.
CHAIR: Can I say to you: I honestly could walk out of here now, and I may—I may. I'll make a couple of phone calls and I'll bet that, within less than 10 minutes—I'll bet you a carton of XXXX beer—I can come back to you with a dozen names, and I'm no longer an investigator, but I'm in the building.
Dr Aleck : I wouldn't doubt it, but, when someone contacts someone and says an investigator from the Civil Aviation Safety Authority seeks this information, oftentimes we don't get the responsiveness we would—
CHAIR: Oh, Mr Aleck, this is lame.
Senator GALLACHER: Can I just say this: why wouldn't you just issue an infringement because there's clear evidence that there's a breach of the rules? You could issue the infringement and, if you get taken to court, that's how infringements work. The police don't sit down and say, 'I think Senator Gallacher was speeding, but I'll need to interview every motorist that he was driving with or anyone else in the car. It's evidence, visual evidence. It's a breach of the rules; give them an infringement; behaviour changed. No-one takes an infringement to court when they've done the wrong thing. You're coming in here saying, 'We would have no possibility of getting a conviction.' That doesn't stand the pub test, as Senator Sterle said. The bloke got fined at Bunnings and you've got a penalty there of $180 and 50 penalty units and you say he was fined $900. If you times 50 by $180, it's $9,000.
Dr Aleck : Senator, a penalty unit is an infringement and, under the legislation, it's assessed at a fraction of the amount a court could fine if the person were found guilty. Five per cent is what we apply.
Mr Carmody : So five times $180 becomes $900.
Senator GALLACHER: That also would have great difficulty getting through the front bar of a hotel.
Dr Aleck : May I say also, Senator: when a police officer issues an infringement notice for someone speeding, the police officer is present and witnesses it.
CHAIR: You've got video evidence. Someone's put it out there, as with the Bunnings case, where they've actually boasted about flying down to Bunnings and picking up a sausage. And you've taken action, quite appropriately, in my view, and you issued an infringement. When it happens around Parliament House, you take a different view: you can't find witnesses, you can't interview people and you have no prospect of success of prosecution. Simply, you should have issued the infringement and let the other person defend themselves.
Dr Aleck : Senator, there are any other number of cases where we have had evidence of an offence, of a contravention, and we've not issued an infringement notice. We've also issued a counselling notice.
Senator GALLACHER: We in this place have to set a higher standard and, if we do something that appears to be in contravention of rules, regulations, we have to be held to account. I fully accept that. And you are an entity in charge of aviation safety and, when you have a pilot breaking the rules and you wander around as if it's too hard, it doesn't look good. - Unlike Dom James who is embuggered for 8+ years on piss poor evidence and a dodgy original decision - FDS!
Senator STERLE: Dr Aleck, you're right. You have had footage and other incidents where someone has flown a drone in the wrong place, and one was the person we're talking about now: his employer. We know that. You've done that, but let us get back to this. This footage clearly shows it going over Parliament House. I can tell you now that the camera wasn't in the back of a magpie's bum.
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