[Peetwo]

ASA ARFFS Inquiry - Episode II: ICAO & the Murky connection??

Ref: 

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Hmm...'any other Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting matters'...well I could name a few? 

But here is a hint from our patron Saint of Australian Aviation Safety...

 

Moving on, I note that the first cab off the rank is the United Firefighters Union of Australia and after reading their totally first rate expert submission, that for once addresses properly and transparently the full ToR of the inquiry, I can see why: ref -  https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ash...bId=667139

Well done to the DPS?   - This must be the Dunceunda's Federal Parliament quickest publication of an interstate RRAT Senate Inquiry public hearing Hansard, that I can ever recall? Shame there is not much adversarial content that is worthy of repeating, not to mention it was again somewhat hijacked/derailed by Senator O'Sofullofit...  Anyhow for those interested 'fill your boots'...  
 

• Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee
  (Senate-Thursday, 14 March 2019)
  

For mine one of the more interesting lines of questioning was to the Department:

Senator GALLACHER: How many category 6 airports do not have the ARFF provision?

Ms Spence : I don't have that in front of me. Can we take that on notice?

Senator GALLACHER: Would it be fair to say that that there are roughly eight million passengers, five per cent of airline passengers, who travel without the ARFF service?

Ms Spence : What I do know is that around 96 per cent of passengers are covered by our services. I just don't know if that four per cent equates to that eight million.

Senator GALLACHER: That is the great stat in Australia—most of us live within 100 kilometres of the coast and most of us live in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. But there are eight million passengers who don't live in those areas who don't have firefighting services. Is that correct?

Ms Spence : I would not say they have got no firefighting services. They don't have aviation rescue and firefighting services. We do have arrangements with the off-airport services. I appreciate the point that is going to be raised about the time it would take to respond, but there are arrangements in place for the other airports.

Senator GALLACHER: What is the situation for places like Yulara, which is 470 kilometres from the nearest firefighting crew?

Ms Spence : I would have to take on notice the specifics.

Senator GALLACHER: What oversight exists with CASA decisions regarding ARFF? How does the department interact with CASA?

Ms Spence : For example, we were the ones who ran the review. We work with CASA when they are doing their regulation updates. We are observers on their advisory panel and we have a general policy oversight for the operations of CASA but they are a statutory independent regulator.

Senator GALLACHER: You very helpfully supplied all the information about the major airports in Australia. How would you characterise those airports, particularly Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide? Are those passenger movements growing?

Ms Spence : I know Melbourne is. As a general rule, I would say the market is increasing rather than decreasing.

Senator GALLACHER: There will always be a debate about or an assessment of the risk. Senator O'Sullivan has highlighted a bit of that, both publicly and privately. But we do have ARFF in place at these airports where it appears to me as if the passenger numbers are growing.

Ms Spence : Yes.

Senator GALLACHER: The traffic through the terminals is growing and there is a valiant attempt by Airservices to provide additional rescue and firefighting services in terminal emergencies, whether they be fires in terminals, people having heart attacks or whatever. How does the department look at how this affects the primary function, which is the aviation rescue and firefighting service in the event of the A380 or 777 or multiple events on the runways, versus spreading a lean resource more widely? Do you look at that or is it none of your business?

Ms Spence : We are not technical experts in that space, so we are reliant on the expertise that rests within the agencies.

Senator GALLACHER: So Airservices is a statutory authority and CASA is a statutory authority. If it goes belly up, they get it wrong and there is, heaven forbid, an inquiry that says you probably should not have spread your resources so thin, who does that come back to at the end of the day? It comes back to the department, doesn't it?

Ms Spence : We would then be looking at what needs to be done to change it but we don't have the technical expertise within the organisation to say that the settings are wrong at the moment.

Senator GALLACHER: We've had the Fire Protection Association saying that there's a diminution in the standards of the firefighting foams and that we don't test to Australian conditions; we test to 15 degrees, which is European conditions. We believe that the prudent thing to do here is some testing to make sure the replacement foam is the best one. Is that a departmental responsibility, or do you have no technical expertise in that area as well?

Ms Spence : It would be a matter for CASA. But, ultimately, what would be very helpful is if we could get more evidence from the organisation that was presenting about the basis for their statement. We'd be very happy to follow up with them to understand a bit more about what they were talking about at the table.

Senator GALLACHER: Just so I'm very clear on this, is our current Deputy Prime Minister the minister responsible for this area?

Ms Spence : Yes, Senator.

Senator GALLACHER: And do Airservices and CASA report to the department?

Ms Spence : They report to their boards.

Senator GALLACHER: Their boards.

Ms Spence : Yes.

Senator GALLACHER: They sit in estimates. We get nothing out of your secretary, but Secretary Mrdak used to say, 'We talk to them but they report through their board structure.'

Ms Spence : That's right.

Senator GALLACHER: If they don't meet a service requirement or if, through some decision they make, they cause something that inconveniences the minister, how does that get resolved?

Ms Spence : As Secretary Mrdak would have said, and as Secretary Kennedy would say now, we engage very closely with them. We can't direct them to do anything. The minister does have direction powers, and if there were a significant concern, that would obviously be something that could be looked at. But, as I said, we don't have any evidence in front of us to suggest that there is a significant issue that we need to respond to.

Senator GALLACHER: In particular, if there's the granting of exemptions to Airservices as an aviation rescue firefighting provider by CASA, that really is their business; it's nothing to do with the department.

Ms Spence : We couldn't require CASA to issue such an exemption or prevent them from issuing such an exemption.

Senator GALLACHER: But, in the event that, down the line, that exemption were proven not to have been the correct procedure, what would the department do?

Ms Spence : In that situation, we would work with CASA. If an amendment to legislation or regulation were needed to require changes to the way in which CASA was undertaking its functions or what Airservices was doing, we would be the lead in terms of any amendments to the legislation or regulation. That's from a formal point of view. If it were less formal, then, again, we would work closely with the agencies to address what issues could be addressed.

Senator GALLACHER: Airservices and CASA have been interacting with this committee for a number of years. How would you characterise the department's confidence level, in particular, in aviation rescue and firefighting services? Are they satisfying your department in the correctness and efficacy of their decision-making?

Ms Spence : I have no evidence to suggest that they're not.

Senator GALLACHER: Are you confident that they have made the appropriate and correct decisions?

Ms Spence : To the best of my knowledge, yes.

Senator GALLACHER: Thanks, Chair...


...Senator PATRICK: Ms Pyett, you might have heard the discussion before when we were talking about a tasked resource analysis. If Airservices wants to make a change to the structure of its firefighting services, it needs to be CASA approved. I presume there are processes that things go through. Is that something that is driven from a policy perspective or is it something that CASA would drive?

Ms Spence : I think I can answer that. People can correct me if I'm wrong. As per the review, we would work on the policy framework and get approval from the responsible minister for what the key policy settings would be. Then it would go through the normal CASA regulatory reform steps, which involve consultation on a draft, establishment of a technical working group and further consultation. Then, ultimately, CASA would provide advice through the department to the minister on amendments to the regulation.

Senator PATRICK: Okay, but I'm just trying to understand where you draw the line between what is policy and what the agency or CASA might decide. From a policy perspective, can you set the benchmark to say that these sorts of changes must be done by way of a proper risk analysis?

Ms Spence : Essentially, that's what happened through the regulatory review process. The policy parameters that we were looking at were really around where ARFFs should be established and what the criteria, at an overarching level, should be in terms of passenger numbers and where that would trigger the requirement for an ARFFs. When it gets down into the detail of the way in which this would be done, that would be a matter for CASA to progress.

Senator PATRICK: So, from a policy perspective, you couldn't say, 'As a minimum standard, for any changes that might affect safety, we expect that a safety case is carried out.'

Ms Spence : The only other thing that I'd say is that we'd be mindful of ICAO—the International Civil Aviation Organization—requirements as well. But, for example, in the case of the triggers for when an ARFFs is required to disestablish, a risk assessment has to be done before you disestablish one and also before you would establish one. Mr Moore, did you want to add something?

Mr Moore : Yes, just for the record, on the pricing structure. Economic regulatory oversight is done entirely by the ACCC, because the provision of ARFFs is a declared service for the purposes of part VIIA of the Competition and Consumer Act. Airservices sets its prices with airlines using a five-year long-term planning agreement. The most recent long-term planning agreement expired 30 June 2016, and charges have been frozen at those levels since that point in time...

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Plus from the BITN thread: 

THE PROVISION OF RESCUE, FIREFIGHTING AND EMERGENCY RESPONSE AT AUSTRALIAN AIRPORTS - UPDATE

Submissions update: https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Bus...ubmissions  
 
Plus tomorrow there will be a public hearing in Adelaide which again the Firies Union will be appearing at: 

For those interested tune in tomorrow here: https://www.aph.gov.au/News_and_Events/W...tent-panel

Quote from the tail end of the UFUA Hansard segment:

 

CHAIR: In wrapping up, is there anything that you wish to leave us with that we might have missed?

Mr Marshall : Yes, there is. I do apologise. We actually have a supplementary submission that has been put together by the University of Newcastle, which is their CofFEE's report. I was hoping to be able to provide it.

CHAIR: As a supplementary submission?

Mr Marshall : Yes.

CHAIR: Absolutely, you can.

Mr Marshall : I will be able to confirm the time lines on that, but the availability of some of the academics became a problem.

CHAIR: What we might do then is accept that when you do have the ability to deliver that, because we know that, if we need to, we can bring you back in and you can talk to it.

Mr Marshall : Thank you very much.

Naturally the possibility of a supplementary UFUA submission supported by the UNSW CofFEE crew perked my interest...

This curiousity bump sent me to Google, to which I discovered the following 76 page UFUA/UNSW submission which ironically was addressing the DIRD 2016 ARFFS regulatory policy review (mentioned above): https://infrastructure.gov.au/aviation/a...es/UFU.pdf

Here is the conclusion from the excellent but very damning UNSW CofFEE attachment:

Section 9 Conclusion

The DIRD proposals constitute an intention to further diminish our compliance with ICAO
standards, and lower aviation safety standards in Australia, rather than raise them as should
be the function of aviation safety regulatory reform.

Raising the establishment and disestablishment thresholds for ARFF provision will further
delay the establishment of ARFF at airports where large passenger aircraft are routinely
landing and taking off with more than 150 passengers on board. Any day, something
unpredictable can cause one of them to overshoot a runway, placing every one of those lives
at risk. Without the means immediately at hand to apply appropriate quantities of fire
retardant foam within 2-3 minutes, all lives may be lost in what would otherwise have been a
survivable situation.

It is not just a problem of delaying the establishment of ARFFs at growing airports. The
DIRD discussion paper’s suggestion that projected passenger movement growth will
effectively preserve the status quo despite the higher establishment / disestablishment
thresholds relies on very optimistic growth estimates. Should these not turn out to be true, the
consequence will not just be a delay in ARFF expansion, but the removal of existing ARFF
services.

In any event, raising these thresholds reflects little commitment to enhancing aviation safety.
Why would increasing traffic volumes not be interpreted as a signal to expand fire and rescue
services, if the preservation of human life was really the policy priority? It is not possible for
policy makers to know that fewer aviation accidents will happen in future, but even if it were,
that would not justify the delayed establishment or removal of ARFF from any airport, since
we certainly cannot know at what airport a future aviation emergency will occur. Their
confidence in asserting that these proposals have negligible risk implications is baseless.

The issue cries out for a public education program explaining how poorly Australian airports
are prepared for aviation emergencies. This lack of public awareness, reflected in the
Braithwaite survey of 2001, has thus far enabled the commercial preoccupations of industry
stakeholders to hold sway, relying on the travelling public having little comprehension of the
risks they are taking in travelling to many major destinations in Australia.

The cavalier attitude that today’s industry players and policy makers show toward our special
reputation as a safe tourism and aviation destination is disappointing. They fail to recognise
the opportunity they have, to build on the enviable safety record they inherited from their
industry’s heavily regulated past, by enhancing the current system’s capacity to manage
future emergencies. Instead they see the safety legacy they inherited as something to cash in
on and risk for short term gain.

The proposed establishment / disestablishment changes are premised on two principal
assumptions. The first is that recent historic gains in aviation technical reliability mean that
safety regulation can and should be reduced if it produces a cost saving. The second is that it
would be possible to determine the probability of an aviation accident occurring at a given
airport. Both of these assumptions are unsustainable.
 
Firstly, we do not know that the past rate of improvement in the aviation accident rate is
indicative of its future course, given emerging challenges. Technological improvements were
relatively ‘low hanging fruit’ as compared to what remains, namely the human and
environmental factors that now constitute the major causes of aviation accidents. The rising
sophistication of technology is now being recognised to be producing new challenges on
many fronts.

Secondly, the literature is consistently sceptical as to the value of modelling the probability of
such rare events, as in the case of a commercial airliner accident occurring at a given
Australian airport. Airport risk assessments can meaningfully model the consequences of a
crash, but not the probability of it occurring at a specific time and place, owing to the relative
scarcity of the event.

If ARFF were to be subject to an airport ‘risk analysis’, where a faux science process claimed
to determine the risk of an accident occurring there, the situation would be ripe for regulatory
capture by the interest groups whose views have appeared to have held sway over this policy
area for decades. It would be prudent to require the auditor-general or similarly trustworthy
office to review any such assessment to establish how much of the analysis was mere
assumption.

If we actually are committed to prioritising passenger safety, and not just saying it, the logical
course is clear. To properly manage an unpredictable catastrophic event that may occur in
one of many possible locations, not knowing the time or place, but knowing its probable
magnitude, we would have to accept a high degree of redundant preparedness, and maintain
the means to respond in many locations. This reflects the ICAO position of ensuring that the
means of mounting an appropriate rescue firefighting response exists at all certified airports.
On the other hand, if our commitment to passenger safety is more verbal than actual, we
would probably view any redundant safety capacity as an opportunity for cost rationalisation.

It is our contention that Australia’s long term economic interests are far better served by
investing in a program of expanded ARFF protection, to leave the next generation an
enhanced aviation safety legacy that will continue to underpin the attractiveness of our
tourism and aviation industries in an increasingly unsafe world.

To this end we propose the adoption of the funding model similar to that recommended by
the 2003 regional aviation review, whereby a modest standard charge be added to the price of
every air ticket to fund (eventually) universal ARFF provision.

This should be achieved over time through a staged program, aimed at eventually making all
certified airports fully compliant with the ICAO, beginning with category 6 airports, then
category 5, etc.

For smaller airports with low volumes of traffic, combinations of retained and volunteer
firefighters could be utilised, depending on the amount of air traffic, as with fire management
regimes elsewhere in Australia. Airservices, or a dedicated national ARFF service, could be
responsible for delivering services, and training and equipping services operating on a small
scale.

By these means, the quality of Australian airport emergency response capability could then
become a proud national feature, not the guilty secret it has been allowed to become.
In the absence of such a strategy, and should the recommendations of the DIRD discussion
paper be adopted, certified airports that are without the capability to respond to an aviation
accident within ICAO parameters should be clearly identified to the travelling public with a
different certification designation. It is otherwise a clear betrayal of the trust that the
travelling public place in Australian aviation to allow them to believe such services are in
place when they are not.

Still reading but I am surmising that the content of the UFUA/UNSW submission will be an updated version of the above submission...

MTF? - Yes definitely...P2