[Peetwo]

ToARE: Part II

Backtracking slightly and referring to the official Parliamentary timeline of regulatory embuggerance - Aviation safety regulation timeline 1982-2011 (which you'll note is desperately in need of an update??) - note the following extract which was dated 4 May 1994:

..Opposition Transport spokesman Mr John Sharp MP labelled Seaview Air as operating dangerously and a passenger risk. The CAA upgraded Seaview's licence from charter to regular public transport operator on 27 July...

Now FFWD to April 1996 where John Sharp had then became Minister after the 1996 election:

CASA board members rejected calls for their resignations from the new Minister for Transport and Regional Development, the Hon John Sharp MP.

 
Now FFWD to this extract dated 2 October 1994: 

..A fatal accident of Seaview Air Rockwell Aero Commander en-route to Lord Howe Island killed nine aboard. On 17 October, the Minister announced a judicial inquiry to be conducted by Sir Lawrence Street into the handling of operations of Seaview Air by the CAA. On 23 December, the Minister announced the appointment of a second commissioner, Mr James Staunton who later replaced Sir Lawrence Street. The Commission of Inquiry into the Relations Between the CAA and Seaview Air commenced on 16 January 1995. The intended reporting date was 31 May 1995, to the Minister for Transport, the Hon Laurie Brereton MP, but the report did not appear until 8 October 1996 (see below) with a new Government and Minister the Hon John Sharp MP. Three other inquiries were conducted through the Parliamentary (Morris) committee, the Federal Police inquiry into dealings between some CAA officers and Seaview, and by the BASI investigation. Some CAA staff were dismissed...

This of course led to the very damning Staunton (commission of inquiry) report. The following are Hansard extracts from former Minister John Sharp's response to the tabling of the Staunton report and then Joe Hockey's 11 December 1994 speech in relation to the Ministerial response to the Seaview commission of inquiry :

..In July last year, the commercial air traffic services operations of the CAA were placed with a government business enterprise, Airservices Australia, and the safety regulatory functions vested in a separate statutory authority, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority. But changing the name does not solve the problems. While there have been some worthwhile changes, particularly at Airservices, I am not satisfied that sufficient change has taken place within the safety regulator. I expect, and the public will demand, that CASA take strong and swift action in re sponse to the recommendations of Commissioner Staunton.

I reiterate my concerns about the lack of aviation experience on the board of CASA. Since their appointment more than 12 months ago, I am not aware of the board having made any serious attempt to change the culture of CASA, and I cannot think of a CASA non-executive board member having ever addressed an industry meeting or conference outlining a vision for reform of CASA.

There is a need for strong leadership and a knowledge and understanding of the industry by board members to enable them to keep ahead of the bureaucracy. I remain dissatisfied with the performance of the board in this regard and this report reinforces the importance of appointing to the board of CASA strong individuals with relevant aviation experience and the drive for reform. The role of the board is to lead and not merely rubber stamp or monitor.

In light of my concerns developed through my investigations into the Monarch disaster, and now equipped with the findings of Commissioner Staunton, I am totally convinced that substantial change within CASA is absolutely essential. This can best be achieved by having in charge of CASA a board with appropriate skills and relevant experience. I appreciate that individual members of the present board are highly qualified in their respective professions. But, just as it has taken them years of diligent effort to gain those qualifications, it will also take them years to become aviation experts. The millions of Australians who climb aboard an airplane each year can't afford to wait for them to gain that expertise.

It is for this reason that I repeat my request for them to step aside; to enable people who are expert to take charge; to implement change; to make CASA a better safety regulator; to make flying safer. I am not empowered under the legislation to remove board members who lack appropriate skills. As the minister responsible, I am required to assure the safety of the Australian public. And yet I cannot state that I have confidence in the skills of the board to ensure that their statu tory responsibility to protect the travelling public is carried out.

I find this personally distressing, particularly when I know there are many fine and capable people within the Civil Aviation Safety Authority who are desperately awaiting the right leadership and vision from the board. I can only hope that Commissioner Staunton's report will have sufficient impact to motivate the board to resign and make way for others.

P2 comment: Thinking on the above parts in bold and comparing those particular statements to the present status quo makes for depressing reading. Also consider that then Minister Sharp was very motivated to reform the regulator but less than a year after he made that speech he was forced to resign after becoming involved in the 'travel rorts' affair (a strong minister having to resign - now why does that sound familiar -   ), in this day and age he would probably have kept his job! Hmm..what might have been??    

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..On 4 May 1994, in the House of Representatives, Minister Sharp, as he is now, when speaking about Seaview's operations, said:

. . . this airline which was operating so dangerously and which was putting people's lives at risk continued to fly.

The minister has subsequently said that it gives him no satisfaction that those concerns were most sadly proven correct by the Seaview crash in October that year...

...The report's 39 recommendations are well considered and insightful. They are the result of the contribution of 142 witnesses, over 900 exhibits, 224 days of sitting, and almost 17,000 pages of transcript. They are, given the most essential standards of air safety, absolute commonsense. In this two-volume report, Commissioner Staunton has noted a number of serious issues which require further attention and almost immediate action. Included amongst these are: firstly, an attitude that characterises breaches of the Civil Aviation Act, regulations and the orders—the attitude is called `aviation trivia'; secondly, a practice of cross hiring that enables an operator to use an aircraft of a type not endorsed on the AOC; thirdly, what can at times be considered widespread disregard by general aviation maintenance organisations for the manufacturers' requirements; fourthly, a practice of pilots overstating flying hours to obtain employment with larger operators; fifthly, the standards and adequacy of pilot training; sixthly, allowing new or relatively inexperienced pilots to fly alone and with passengers with very close to the minimum required flying hours for that particular aircraft type; seventhly, and again, the inadequacy of the maintenance release system; and, eighthly, the importance of the regulatory authority to have adequate information about operators and pilots...

...Out of all the concerns that have been expressed by Commissioner Staunton in this report, the underlying question has to be: was the Civil Aviation Authority competent in its activities and considerations in the lead-up to the very tragic Seaview aircraft crash? It is absolutely crucial that the now safety regulator, CASA, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, which was hived off out of part of the body of the Civil Aviation Authority, has as its key consideration the safety of fee paying passengers...

...The member for Melbourne (Mr Tanner) has given me some level of comfort out of his briefing with CASA this morning. He said that there will be an increase in the number of staff, particularly in relation to regulation. He said that there will be better training for regulators and that there is an increased oversight of international airlines, which is a major problem at the moment. So there is some comforting factor but there is still some way to go.

In this report, Commissioner Staunton said:

The public safety demands high standards of diligence and integrity by both the regulator and the industry.

There is an obligation to ensure that the regulator is not institutionally timid, as was the criticism of the CAA with regard to Seaview. The regulator is there to protect the passengers. The nine people who died off Lord Howe Island deserved better than what they received. Air passengers, in trusting their lives to airline operators in every plane flying in and out of Australian skies, deserve better than that. (Time expired)

During this extremely fractious period (1993-1999) it became strongly evident that the regulator had been captured (refer 6.2.1 pg 205 of Durkin thesis). This evidence in turn left successive Goverment's grappling with how best to properly oversight CASA?? 

The destructive inner turmoil this created within the regulator, was to continue right up until mid-1999 (refer link HERE), till a new period began under then Minister John Anderson (TBC).

MTF...P2 

Ps Like a foul smelling CB over Aviation House, the questions that still linger (after 31 mostly miserable years of trying to reform both the regulator and the regulations) is: Q/ What has changed for the better and at what cost to the industry?