[Peetwo]

Angel Flight submission back up unaltered?? 

Apparently someone had objected to the part of the original submission that contained extracts of the court hearing transcript ie Table 1: (extracts of three pages from table 1, refer to parts in bold) 

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Hmm...reckon I know who objected - 

Anyway I note that for some reason the full court transcript has now been attached to the Angel Flight submission: Ref - 71 Angel Flight (PDF 482 KB)  Attachment 1 (PDF 519 KB)

For those interested in doing the reading, here is a link for the full Federal Court decision: https://jade.io/article/808275

Question: Did Monahan, Dr Aleck & CO lie/mislead the Senate or the Federal Court (ie It can only be one or the other)?   

Next here is the HANSARD:

This part almost wants to make me vomit...

CHAIR: I'm going to ask you one last question on Angel Flight, because we don't have all day, and this is about general aviation. How much are the costs that you asked to the courts to award to Angel Flight?

Ms Spence : I'm sorry; unless Dr Aleck knows, I'll have to take that on notice. I'll try to get that to you tomorrow, but I just don't have that.

CHAIR: I suspect that Dr Aleck might.

Dr Aleck : Chair, [inaudible] the dollar amount. It wasn't so much a question that we asked for it; it was a question of what the court [inaudible] and [inaudible] we can provide specific [inaudible]—

Senator STERLE: You have that look of frustration, Chair.

CHAIR: I do. I am really frustrated that, having heard the evidence this afternoon, Dr Aleck didn't come prepared for questions about Angel Flight, about the costs. He is the head of the legal team. He would have been directing the proceedings. I imagine that he had to sign off on what the requests to the courts were and then what the courts decided. I would be fascinated to know what amount you asked the court to award and then what the court did award. I cannot believe, Dr Aleck, that you do not know the answers to this question. I appreciate that Ms Spence is covering for you, but I am very, very unhappy with the horrible abuse of your position with CASA. It's not right. For regional people [inaudible] general aviation, they are terrified of what you do to people.

Finally here is the EWH take on the latest public hearing:

The RRAT committee made up a fair bit of ground in the GA inquiry this week with another public hearing, exploring some  meaty material and posing some very good questions. The senators took on the Angel Flight restrictions, the loss of infrastructure at Moorabbin, the drain of instructors from GA to the airlines, maintenance training woes and several other issues. But there was a discernible difference with this hearing: Senators Susan McDonald and Glenn Sterle displayed an understanding of the depth of the decay of general aviation and the length of the slippery slide the industry has been on. McDonald went so far as to describe 2021 as a line-in-the-sand year for the GA community. I am not suggesting they haven't understood before this, but this was the first time they displayed the understanding and asked some very good questions of exactly the right people. Case in point: McDonald almost lost it with CASA when they couldn't tell the committee the value of the court costs CASA had been awarded in the Angel Flight case. McDonald clearly didn't believe him and let frustration boil over, and Sterle piled on as well. I got the feeling the senators were mad as hell and they weren't going to take it anymore. The committee got a first-hand experience of the obfuscation GA has been battling for a quarter of a century, turning sympathy into empathy. There are no more hearings scheduled, but if the senators haven't got the point by now, they were never going to.

Hmm...I actually agree with EWH -   

If the pollies don't realise by now that the only way that CASA and the aviation bureaucracy can be fixed is for there to be proper Ministerial oversight with appropriate legislative amendments to the applicable Acts then the GA industry is doomed for failure...   

Maybe..just maybe the ongoing, disturbing CASA embuggerance of Angel Flight could be the catalyst for real reform of the regulator??

MTF...P2