[Peetwo]

Once again back to the future??

Director of Aviation Safety, Pip Spence

I have made it clear to everyone in CASA that a key part of our job is engagement and listening.  We must have effective and productive working relationships with people and organisations across all sectors of Australian aviation so that we engage on issues in a timely and meaningful way. 

CASA needs to know about the challenges being faced by the aviation community and be made aware of emerging and evolving safety risks. To translate this engagement into practical outcomes, it is our job to listen. By that I mean we must not make judgements on the views of others before asking questions and making sure we really understand the issues being raised. And, of course, we must be ready to act.

CASA already engages widely with the aviation community and my emphasis is intended to build and improve on these existing formal and informal communications. My intention is not to create a whole new way of operating, but rather to strengthen the relationships and communication between CASA and the aviation community.

Sandy via the AP email chains:

For the life of me I can’t see one specific item that will make one iota of difference. Pip Spence is on I think a five year contract, salary is c.$650k and she’s young enough to see other opportunities after CASA because she’ll soon see that its a poisonous environment.

We’ve had more promises, and nothing but promises, since 1988 saw aviation removed from direct Ministerial control with the creation of a monopoly corporate body, the CAA followed by the more impossible CASA with “safety” as the prime and highest consideration meaning CASA can do anything and Parliament has steadfastly rubber stamped every new and warped pile of regulatory nightmares. As Dick Smith said if there’s no risk balanced assessment against cost then all airliners should be fitted with ejection seats for passenger safety.

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...Its obvious now that listen and engage is the playbook strategy because newbies and the ever hopefuls believe that because its so bad they must take time to work out matters and change the way they operate and regulate. ‘Take time’ being the operative element.

Here’s another CASA now “we’ll fix it” illustration below. Same old story with no intention whatever to make any meaningful reforms.



Then there’s the never ending inquiries, GI (Government Industries) make work look busy and much easier to sit back looking so interested and asking clever questions. The only real bonus for all partaking is a minor amount of physical exercise involved in making an appearance, this bonus is heavily outweighed by a quantum amount by the wasted time by submitters and committees not to mention $more millions down the drain.

Finally EWH's take on the latest PIP waffle...

Via the latest LMH:

CASA DAS Pip Spence has gone where other directors have gone before and stated that CASA needs to improve relationships with the aviation community. No matter how many times that gets intoned, the outcome is always the same: poor relationships. That's probably why they're always saying they need to improve. I think the issue is being side-stepped slightly here. With Rob Walker in charge of Stakeholder Engagement, relationships with CASA gained great tensile strength, but ultimately cracked and broke under impact; the impact delivered by poor decisions and personal skills on behalf of the operations team. One side of CASA builds-up the relationships; the other side smacks them down again. That caused the relationships to be tenuous, cautious and have little resilience. That's what Spence has to tackle. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say general aviation in particular would love a good relationship with the regulator, but what sort of relationship are you in if the other person doesn't understand you and you don't trust them anyway? It's OK for CASA to say relationships need to improve, but they need a good strategy for maintaining the relationships. If not, in a few years we'll be hearing Ms Spence's successor intoning the same thing.

MTF...P2