[Peetwo]

From Tony Taggart via Sandy: 

To: Tony Taggart
 
Subject: RE: 2015/4552 - RE Taggart and Civil Aviation Safety Authority

UNCLASSIFIED
Mr Taggart

I acknowledge receipt of your email which I have forwarded to the Director.

A response will be provided to you as soon as practicable

Regards

Carolyn

Carolyn Hutton
Manager Government and International Relations Stakeholder Engagement Group Civil Aviation Safety Authority

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Attn: DAS Mark Skidmore

G'day Mark,

Thought that you might be interested in the outcome of my appeal to the AAT re the documents withheld from me by your Avmed and legal office.

Not much joy for me, plenty for you and your legal team of 12 lawyers = Or is it a poisoned challis??

The decision reveals some very interesting issues:

- None of my arguments were refuted. Your legal team has some work to do to censor documents previously denied to me that now must be made available to me.

- The problem that the Deputy president had was purely technical in that her hands were tied in how she could apply the letter of the law. That should give you NO comfort.

- The issue of how and why Avmed made its over night ie from the 10th Dec 2014 to the 11th Dec 2014, decision to remove all the previous restrictions that it had unfairly placed on my medical certificate, remains a mystery because it has not produced a single note that gives rise to actually create the motion to issue the new Certificate and to write the accompanying letter to me.

- It seems that by an act of osmosis, the computer has just fired up, created the certificate, drafted the letter and mysteriously Navathe's signature appears on it. Incredible and unbelievable!!

- Most interesting of all is that the issue of Legal Professional Privilege and the act of denial of access to documents CAN, not withstanding any legal right to do so, be waived should the Director of Air Safety ie you, wish it.

- None of the points that I made about the Windsor File or the Brazil Convention or the incredulity of the lack of decision documents fell on fallow grounds. Ie those points were taken as being correct.

- The pity was that it was all to late in the chain of events which gave rise to the application for access via the AAT. Sorry - hands are tied it doesn't have the jurisdictional power to make the Decision.

So Mark, This case now gives the industry the ability to argue that, unless there is some real harm caused to CASA by you waiving a so called right to withhold information from it (the industry) you can be called out for not being open and honest with the industry if you deny access to documents under what are, by any measure, dubious FOI rules. And in any case, what possible damage can be caused by being open and honest?

In my case, what possible damage can be caused by me being advised why AVMED changed its hitherto entrenched position which saw me as nothing but a danger to the safety of air navigation for some years and then suddenly and without any recorded decision I was (correctly as history has proved) not? Just what has been the cost of the obfuscation?

I will be very pleased to hear from you about this matter.

Best Wishes

Tony Taggart

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Dear Mr Taggart

Please find attached a copy of a Decision that the Tribunal has made in this application, together with a copy of a covering letter accompanying the Decision.

Please note that generally AAT decisions are made publicly available.

Yours sincerely

///

Keith Sypott
ASSOCIATE
Melbourne Registry
Administrative Appeals Tribunal
Tel 03 9282 8444 Fax 03 9282 8480
Email melbourne.registry@aat.gov.au
Level 16, HWT Tower, Southgate 40 City Road, Southbank VIC 3006 GPO Box 9955  Melbourne VIC 3001

www.aat.gov.au

Here is the AAT decision: Taggart and Civil Aviation Safety Authority (Freedom of information) [2016] AATA 327 (20 May 2016)

(From Administrative Appeals Tribunal of Australia; 20 May 2016; 166 KB)

And this was Sandy's reply email to TT:

Date: Tuesday, 24 May 2016
Subject: FW: 2015/4552 - RE Taggart and Civil Aviation Safety Authority

Tony,

All the more maddening in view of the rational approach being taken by the US, and very recently, by the UK CAA to virtually do away with aviation specific medicals for PPL, on the basis that fit to drive a car is quite sufficient, and that we self assess between examinations. Furthermore medical science is nowhere near being able to forecast an incapacitating event in flight. I expect that if and when we come to that day, well into the future, automatic flight will be commonplace anyway.

Why are the US and UK proceeding in this new direction? Because of surveys which show that there is no safety case. These are not third world countries, they are not idiots and they certainly don't move on such matters without careful study and good cause.

To bad that our troglodyte leadership in CASA can't bear to come out into the sunlight, but that would hurt egos and pay packets so we should not be surprised that vested interests beat the national interest.

More power to your arm for keeping on the pressure, it is adding up I think daily. Tomorrow some of our frontline are in CB for talks and the pussyfooting of the past is just that....past.

Sandy

MTF...P2