[Peetwo]

Of ticking boxes and magical illusions

The Ferryman might not take the bait but I will. Shane Comedy is a bureaucrat. He lives in a fantasy world where survey percentages, box ticking, glossy annual reports and pie charts are his only friend. He lives in Can’tberra, a city that looks like The Truman Show - neatly lined box offices and apartments, perfectly manicured lawns, garden edges that line up perfectly, where an average salary is around $200k, a bureaucrat Chief starts at $400k, and the restaurants are filled with lettuce eating executives drinking a $20 orange juice and where the mere thought of breaking wind in their Armani suits or Dolce and Gabanna skirts has them running to the psychiatrist.

Kharon, duck him mate duck him. The muppet needs to break free from under the Miniscules desk and break out of his protective bubble and go sniff and taste the real world. The poor possum would be scurrying back to his protected Can’tberra walls and ministerial comfort blanket in no time....

Shane, two free tickets to the Ministers Khyber Pass are in the mail. Enjoy.

Tempting fate here but the following is cribbed from this week's Oz Flying LMH, where Hitch would at first appear to be shocked that the Leopard - ie. CASA, under Carmody Capers - may not have actually changed it's spots...  

...A very wise and well-informed person once told me that if you have to choose between the likelihood of a conspiracy or a major blunder at CASA, go for the major blunder every time! It's a philosophy that has guided me well ... until now. Yesterday CASA released their decision on the uncharted airfield frequency issue, but there are some serious problems with the accompanying narrative. I will attempt now to summarise. "In April we decided to recommend using the Multicom 126.7 and the majority of feedback supported the proposal, so as a result of this feedback we have decided to proceed with recommending the area VHF." WT-bloody-F? Logic like that is not going to get you a pass mark in COM101 at uni. It could be another blunder, but this time, I'm voting for conspiracy. Something, or someone, has changed the regulator's mind and we're not being told what or who that is, but clearly the force was powerful enough for CASA to risk their future relationship with the industry by doing a 180 then telling the aviation community it was a result of the feedback. Regardless of what your favourite frequency is, this consultation looks compromised. If it was safe for CASA to recommend the Multicom in April, why is it no longer safe to do so in October? Multicom has gone from an "acceptable level of risk" (CASA's words) to an unacceptable level of risk. And as the risk assessments were done before this last round of consultation, the risk must have been known when CASA decided to recommend the Multicom back in April. Something is curdled in Copenhagen. In some ways I feel sorry for CASA; this issue got very big on them and it looks to the world like they didn't know how to handle it.

 it was always going to take time to turn the regulator around.

Dalton Trumbo couldn't have written a better script: one day after CASA released their vexxing decision on the CTAF issue, the results of the satisfaction survey are published, showing how much happier we are with them now than in 2015. I wonder if we'd get the same results if we had the chance to do the survey again next week. As I see it, the mystery behind CASA's about-face on the Multicom has signatures of three major behaviours we were hoping would be weeded out of the regulator by now: arbitrary decision making, failing to take notice of the industry and inconsistency. It sort of looks like a throw-back doesn't it? To be fair, the results of the survey are very impressive for CASA; they show industry at large finally agrees with the consistent spiel that CASA is improving. There have been a heap of changes within CASA since the Forsyth Report came out, and it was always going to take time to turn the regulator around. The survey results are not an indicator that it's all smooth sailing from here on, but it's possible we could be now entering the era when the impacts of the changes are starting to be felt. It makes the Multicom result even more disappointing...


Read more at http://www.australianflying.com.au/the-l...iiWApau.99

  
Hmm...personally no surprises here, after all CASA and the Iron Ring have been doing it for decades - IMO Triadic nails it off the UP: https://www.pprune.org/pacific-general-a...st10286786

...megan; You are correct in that there are very few individuals that have their name to anything. Yes Mr Walker has a role and since he moved across from Airservices some 2 years ago the communications out of CASA have improved significantly. There are those within the organisation that still do their own thing and to hell with the industry they are meant to serve. Unfortunately Mr Walker does not have control of those individuals. The sooner those individuals are identified and shown the door the better - what some might say is the last of the iron ring? Those staff are only there for the money and their own ego. CASA is not only a regulator but a service provider. The sad part is that it does far more regulating than it does in service provision. They really need to get the legal people out of the letter writing and decision making - it might be more relevant to aviation then?...

   

MTF...P2