[Wombat]

Pollyanna? Not. After bailing out my burrow, I read the “Flight Safety” interview with Ms. Spence.

Now the marsupial mind is not very plastic; wombats tend to be direct in their thinking and travelling behaviour, so when I read Pip Spence:

'I’d like to think the CASA I lead is a respected regulator, a transparent regulator. Inevitably, some people won’t like a decision, but I never want people to be able to say, ‘We have no idea why they decided what they did’ .

I want to make sure we’ve got a really sophisticated approach to risk management that is embedded within the organisation. That means everything we do has got to be owned by the executive and focussed on the things that are important to aviation safety.

I want to make sure we focus on what genuinely matters and act in a way that helps not hinders safety – allowing pilots, engineers, airports, airlines and everyone that plays a part in aviation to put their energy and effort into making their operations and businesses as safe as they can be.

Success for me also means knowing we won’t always get it right, but it’ll never be deliberate. We have to be able to acknowledge when we got it wrong, apologise and work out what we need to do to move on."

……….And for that to work, a ‘just culture’ is such an important principle. If someone does do something wrong, they shouldn’t feel they’re going to be held up as a scapegoat or criticised publicly. As an organisation we need to support anyone who, for whatever reason, made an honest mistake.”

I thought we had a certified Pollyanna as DAS..

Then it slowly dawned on me that no one, not even a wombat, could be that stupid. I realised I had been reading a subtle statement of expectations.

I think it’s time we got behind Ms. Spence and helped.