[Peetwo]

30+ years in the Aviation Hall of DOOM -

Extracts from Senate thread post - Oh the ironies are boundless:

The following is a Hansard copy of a nearly 22 year old speech, that the former Minister John Sharp made that go to the bona fides of my suggestion and clearly highlights how much of grasp he has of the deeply in ground cultural problems that the aviation safety administration and regulation continues to have to this day in Australia (some noteworthy parts in bold)..  : Tuesday, 25 June 1996

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...One of the first principles of regulation should be that the regulators themselves are accountable for their actions. They should be congratulated when their efforts to maintain safe travel are properly, carefully and fairly carried out. They should also be accountable when their failure to do so leads to tragedy or when their failure to do so exposes the very people they are supposed to be protecting to danger...

..This government is determined to ensure that the Civil Aviation Safety Authority will not repeat the errors of its predecessor. I personally have a great deal of commitment to this. I have made it clear to the Director of Aviation Safety that I expect his officers to be fully accountable for their actions. There is no place in the new CASA for officers who hide behind a cloak of intimidation and secrecy to avoid the consequences of their failure to carry out their duties to the highest standards...

...The coroner praised the Reason model of investigation and analysis utilised by the Bureau of Air Safety Investigation, yet counsel for the CAA spent a great deal of time and effort and taxpayers' money during the coronial inquest in seeking to discredit it. It is just that kind of self-interested defensive reaction—at the expense of the taxpayer and the industry—that must be shunned if the public is to have faith in the regulator.


It does not make sense for the regulator to spend more money in defending itself than the claims it was seeking to forestall would have amounted to. All that does is deny the victims' families their due compensation. There must be an open and honest culture, and that is still lacking in the Civil Aviation Safety Authority. [b]This government expects its safety regulator to admit its errors when appropriate and to take remedial measures to reform its culture in order to make it properly responsive to its very weighty responsibilities...

...The new government has recognised that the regulatory framework has grown out of outdated regulations with various amendments over the years and that this needs a complete overhaul. This overhaul will be done with full industry participation and leadership. That overhaul will not be effective, however, without a complete and complementary change in the way CASA goes about its business...

...However, the greatest challenge will be for CASA itself to accept a new culture of accountability not only to me as the minister responsible but also to the parliament and ultimately to the people of Australia.[/b]

Two posts down we then had the revelation that Dick Smith had come...so close but no cigar... to actually getting support for a significant bi-partisan supported reform to the CA Act.

..Businessman Dick Smith won approval last month from Barnaby Joyce and Anthony Albanese for a rewrite of the Civil Aviation Act aimed at slashing crippling costs, but the prospect of a bipartisan deal crashed days later with Mr Joyce’s resignation from cabinet...

Which leaves us (AGAIN -  ) with waiting to see if the new DPM/miniscule has a pulse; or any kind of inkling to possibly pluck the ailing industry from the clutches of an aviation safety bureaucracy behemoth, seemingly hell bent on scorching from the earth all remnants of a once small but flourishing and essential GA industry...

 On this theme I note that Dick Smith is (AGAIN -  ) showing signs of exasperation and suspicion that we may have yet another in a long line of 'do nothing' miniscules...

Extracts from UP post:

Dick Smith - It’s not looking good. I remember I was hopeful Warren Truss would be better than John Anderson. But this was not so.


Imagine if you became Deputy Prime Minister of this country. Pretty fantastic. Surely you would want to put in some changes to make it all worthwhile!

History does not support this. Mr Anderson claimed cost was not to be taken into account and it allowed the Bureaucracy to further destroy our General Aviation Industry..

I wonder what the new Minister has been told. Seems to be complete silence. Poor Australia.

Lead ballooon. Are you laughing at me re your post 43?

Which was followed by an excellent historical summary from jonkster : 

I may be wrong in some details and happy to stand corrected but my memory was CASA started a rewrite of the CAO/ANOs and CARs in the mid 1990s to simplify the regulatory framework.


The end result would reduce the then CARs, CAOs into a simple 2 tiered structure by rewriting it, so existing CAOs would be either turned into actual regulations (CARs) or advisory documents describing procedures that would acceptably comply with the CARs (CAAPs).

It sounded pretty sensible, would reduce the complexity and spaghetti nature of existing regulation making it all easier to understand, easier to comply with and verify compliance with and consequently make things safer and more efficient.

Again, as I recall the process was going to take some time as it was a big job - not a year or so but probably a few years but would progressively replace and simplify the existing regulations as it proceeded.

Again I may be wrong here but I understood NZ decided on a similar rewrite of their legislation but they started a few years earlier in the early 1990s.

It is now over 20 years later. NZ have had their rewritten model pretty much all in operation for nearly 20 years? (is that the case? I am not familiar with their history).

Meanwhile in Oz, the rewrite is still actively happening and progressively replacing the old system and is apparently close to being finished, the time-frame, much as it has been for 20 years - is in a year or two...

Now there are also CASRs as well as CARs and CAOs so instead of streamlining the regulations into a single document with an additional advisory document, we now have 3 sets of regulation documents and an advisory document and the new "simplified regulations" are more complicated, less consistent, more spaghetti like and more difficult to comply with than the system they were simplifying.

So the current state of play:

* A 2 decade time blowout.

* The apparent accomplishment of exactly the opposite of what was proposed.

* What must be an enormous amount of money and resources expended.

* A regulator that is deeply distrusted and disliked and mocked by the industry.

* A general aviation industry that is struggling to survive and is snowed under a growing mountain of regulations that they feel do little to enhance safety but find add significant costs and impose inappropriate and silly restrictions.

* The apparent loss of a safety culture that actively sought to understand the factors behind incidents and why safety might be compromised, replaced instead by a regulatory system that looks at ways of pursuing and attaching liability rather than identifying and mitigating systemic failures and weaknesses.

That successive ministers, (of all persuasions), for 2 decades have failed to address this other than by allowing the process to roll on directionless is a classic failure of leadership.

Surely such an ongoing, long standing debacle and such a failure to get the situation in hand would make great fodder for someone who wanted to embarrass a pollie or a government?

Which was slightly corrected and given more factually correct internal context from LeadSled:

I may be wrong in some details and happy to stand corrected but my memory was CASA started a rewrite of the CAO/ANOs and CARs in the mid 1990s to simplify the regulatory framework.

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Jonkster,

You are partially correct, but you give to much credit to CASA.

The mid- 1990s changes came from the Howard Government aviation policy "Soaring into Tomorrow" and two successive Ministers, Sharp and Vaile who wouldn't be snowed by the public service,and their personally appointed industry Program Advisory Panel (PAP) for the "CASA Review".

There were two other things missing since, a reform minded CASA CEO/DAS who was ex FAA, and an excellent Secretary of the "Department", Alan Hawke.

The substantive output of the PAP/CASA Review was CASR Parts 21-35, and complete drafts of many other major sections, all in simple language --- that past muster with A-Gs etc.

The resistance from the ranks of CASA was ferocious, and as the Minister's moved on, Hawke moved to Defense etc., "the system" conspired to force the resignation of the DAS/CEO, Leroy Keith, convinced the incoming minister that the PAP was no longer required, all the regulations ready to be made were stopped in their tracks, and any real "reform" was dead, and you see what we have all these years later.

There were major reforms in Parts 21 to 35, resulting in the explosive growth of amateur building and the growth of AUF/RAOz, and huge expansion in the "warbirds" sector, all by removing (reforming) unnecessary restrictions.
At the other end of the scale, CASR 25 removed Australian unique restriction on airlines, especially Qantas, who had to compete internationally against airlines who were not subject to such restrictions.

A point not to be forgotten, the FARs by reference for 23 to 35 became CASR 23-35.

GET THAT ---- WE adopted a CHUNK OF US Title 14 CFR (aka FARs) Parts 23 to 35 as Australian law.

But, as we have seen, as soon as the IRON RING re-assumed control, all reform died, and with only the IRON RING in control, you see the atrocities we have today, like Parts 61/ 141/142, the "maintenance suit" including Part 142 and 66, and the forthcoming are just as bad or worse.

The very idea of having to operate a GA8 Airvan (or a C-207 or C-208 etc) to Part 121 HCRPT standards is ludicrous, as Part 135, itself a terrible document, finishes with five seats.

For my money, we should start with most of the NZ regs, which are the FARs cleaned up and greatly reduced in size. There are a few things NZ we should not do, but that could be easily sorted ---- by people who actually know what they are talking about, and not talking for sectional/union interests.

Tootle pip!!

And, in "adopting" the NZ rules, we need to reform the special provisions CASA has forced, that prevent the Trans Tasman Mutual Recognition Treaty working as intended.

 
Followed by insightful comments from wren 460:

I agree with Jongster, and LeadSled’s detail is replete with the facts of the disgraceful administration and aviation rules rewrite these many years plus backward and extremely costly warfare against GA.


I would modify Jongster’s 20 year time line to 30 years, having the ‘benefit’ of watching the GA industry slowly die by a thousands cuts. The general decline, and sad loss of flying schools in particular, was well underway before Dick Smith had the position to make change, and during his tenure in my 50 years in GA the only time some sense appeared.

The new Minister has not had time to show us his colours, we can hope against hope...

...Jay Sata’s question; “Is it too late to make a noise in Canberra?”

Efforts should be redoubled because reforms of any scale will not happen otherwise. In politics, as in other fields, action occurs when the incentives are strong. Politicians react when they think there’s votes to be had. One recent classic example is the turn around by former Transport Minister Albanese. In his time he allowed CASA to grow by another couple of hundred personnel by instituting an additional fuel levy, planned to raise $89.9 million over four years. Now that its not his responsibility and Labor are salivating at the thought of taking government he thinks they will gain more votes than they will lose by agreeing to make a modest change to the Civil Aviation Act.

The medical reform measures being introduced by CASA CEO Mr. Carmody would not have seen the light of day without persistent bad publicity.

Again all the media attention, especially from the Oz (bless them) negative to CASA, and ATSB (made independent like CASA by Albo) would not be happening without noise.

Easter a time for lamenting what might have been; what transpired since; and what might become - anxious times indeed for some...


MTF...P2