[Peetwo]

The State Safety Program cup – Round one.

Sterle to bowl: Halfwit receiving at the abattoir end.

P 93 – Hansard.  Sterle kicks off proceedings with a short question.  Then follows a torrent of – well - I just don’t know what to call it.  Clearly ‘work-shopped’, obviously rehearsed, probably while sharing a mirror with DDDDDDD; but a ‘jumble’ of buzz words, and nonsense words, which would make Lewis Caroll envious. I must have read the Halfwit opening statement a dozen times now; sometimes I get a glimmer of sense. Only to have that feeble light snuffed out the next read through. For example – despite the ‘mining b’boom’ operational staff numbers remain static; so the front line troops managed the increased volume of traffic without needing additional ‘operational support’ i.e. more controllers. So what is 'back room support'? Then our hero goes on to say that despite the ‘static’ front line non requirement; there was a growth in support staff. What?

Mr Harfield: During that same period of time, other than a couple of additional fire stations, our service provision in air traffic control and aviation rescue and firefighting had not grown. Over the last 10 years our staff numbers had grown 1,500 FTE while our service provision had not really changed. The operational staff numbers had stayed relatively static.

Why? Shirley it didn’t take an additional 1500 folks to draft that ridiculous poster.  

Mr Harfield: It was 1,500 over the last 10 years and, over the last five years, it would have been around 750. At the same time, as I said, our operational staff numbers, which are operational air traffic controllers and aviation rescue and firefighters had not significantly changed.

[All] this staff growth was in our projects and what we would call the back of house, our support areas.

This Muppet do like to ‘badge’ things and use trite little descriptors; “headline increase” and the like. But; and I’m only guessing here – what he is trying to say is, that if the ‘support, back of house’ groups were to be retained, the price of service would increase and the majors told him to put it where the sun don’t shine.  “Unpalatable”.  Furry muff too; if the ‘front line’ is static and there is no increase in efficiency (reduced delays) then he must answer a couple or three awkward questions – like billion dollar earnings, but your broke? Or: what do we get for a five percent increase in charges? Or: WTF are you spending all thy billion dollar earning on – exactly?

[Considering] that this growth had been in back of house, not in our operational areas, obviously the airline industry found that completely unpalatable considering the current economic conditions. We revisited it and we went out with a five per cent price headline increase and consulted on that. Obviously that was unpalatable.

I don’t know who writes this stuff; there are enough swings and roundabouts in the opening ‘blurb’ to confound a barn full of boffins.  No matter – Sterle and his not so merry band keep rolling and do, what I should do; ignore the ‘workshop gobbledegook’ and get to the nitty gritty. I must keep reminding myself that the Senators, in all probability, had an inkling that the AG would be taking a close, if belated look at the ASA. I keep looking for clues, to see if the Senators did know; hard to tell; but what I do get is a clear message that the Estimates committee will be taking a look – and anyway.  

Halfwit reminds me of a couple in the CASA top lines; that Weeks for one. This sentence :-

“[In] restructuring the organisation, which was announced on 17 May, we have proceeded to work through the organisation to reappoint and realign that organisation under the new operating model and that will see a reduction of 900 positions across the organisation.

is a masterpiece in arrogance, ignorance and blarney used to say ‘nothing’. Pompous, pointless verbiage designed to impress.  Like those silly ‘coffee table’ books – tossers love to leave ‘casually’ about the place.  Here’s another – who the hell talks like this.

Mr Harfield: That is correct. This Accelerate Program is not touching our front-line service delivery, which is aviation rescue and firefighting and air traffic controllers. They are actually excluded from the Accelerate Program. As we work through the questions from Senator Xenophon about the interactions with CASA, I will go through that and what we have done in that space.

Enough, the new bucket is starting to look a little shop-worn and battered, courtesy Halfwit, so lets play spot the Senators clues. Halfwit was so busy spinning and weaving, proving that he’d done all his homework in anticipation of the questions; he failed to see the chasm opening up behind him.  

Senator STERLE: I will stay focused and get back onto the question I just want to ask you here first. What is the number of proposed changes to job classification level?

Agency: Airservices Australia

Topic: Accelerate Program

Senator Sterle, Glenn asked: What are the number of proposed changes to job classification levels?

Answer:

A list of the current number of roles at each job classification level compared to that proposed for 30 June 2017 is at Attachment 1.

These proposed changes have not yet been finalised as they are subject to staff consultation. They may also vary as Accelerate Program initiatives progress over coming months.

No operationally rostered air traffic controllers or aviation rescue fire fighters have been affected and risk assessments have been undertaken to ensure operational service delivery is not impacted.

Mr Harfield: We can provide that on notice—all the specifics. We can provide all that.

Senator STERLE: That is easily got? That is no drama?

Mr Harfield: Absolutely.

All carefully prepared; the positive ‘absolutely’ giving the game away; that question was anticipated, homework done and the Senator ‘happy’.  “Must be winning” thinks Halfwit , “he swallowed all that without a blink”.

Senator STERLE: If you could provide that, that would be good. Is there a target that you want to achieve?

Senator STERLE: Okay, that is good—and at what level.

Mr Harfield: Absolutely.

This ‘feel good’ – ‘can-do’ – Absolutely – no worries Senator caper goes on for a page or so. Halfwit now firmly convinced he has the Senator in his back pocket; purring and completely satisfied; mollified by the assurances given, impressed with the Halfwit masterful use of buzz and spin. How thick can you be: ASA has been up to it’s proverbial ass in alligators for about two years now.  Every estimates session has been conducted in an atmosphere of suspicion, attempting to get the lid off this can of worms; yet Halfwit blithely continues his meaningless dialogue unable to see the shadow of a very large axe over his head. The shade of Heff swinging it.

CHAIR: I am really looking for the short answer, and then I will leave you alone. So, the assessment as to the risk profile of a need for these services at an airport has diminished per activities measured by you as passengers in and out. Forget about passengers in and out; to me that is a moot point. But the level of activity at an airport: you have decided that we can cope with more activity in terms of going from 350,000 passengers to 500,000, where we do not think we are going to see an increase in incidents.

Senator STERLE: That is great. We have got it from three of the four most senior people in the pyramid, that there is going to be no contracting out of Airservices work anywhere.

Mr Harfield: Correct. Contracting out in the sense of we are not privatising Airservices, but for me to contract out non-core services, some administrative service or whatever, it does not mean that we will not contract that out—which is normal. It gets undertaken today.

Senator STERLE: With the other 780 or 800 redundancies—you have your job family there—will there be any other contracting out in any of the other job family categories? We have had redundancies, and then will we find contractors coming in to replace them?

Mr Harfield: Not contracting. We may contract out a function—in the sense that there may be a service that we find is more appropriate and more efficient to contract out, and is not what we would call a core service—

Senator STERLE: I understand that.

Mr Harfield: An administrative service that we may be able to do it differently.

Senator STERLE: I do understand that. Mr Harfield, you and the board, and all your people are not dills—I do not say that trying to be smart, but I would hazard as a guess and have a stab there to say that we would be fooling ourselves to not think that work still needs to be done under these other job families, but not for full-time employees? Am I wrong?

About now, Sterle finishes his over and ambles off to the boundary for a spell of fielding and passes the ball to NX. How will the increasingly nervous batsman handle the change of pace? See you back at page 95 to watch the rest of the Halfwit uninspiring innings. Too much blocking and letting the ball go through to the keeper, the run rate reflecting a defensive stance. Nearly done now - a little more to follow; it is the question of how this all stacks up against the ICAO annex, you know the one - State Safety Program - ring any little bells?

Toot toot.

Excellent OBS so far "K" and I certainly look forward to the next instalment...

Pre-empting where I think you'll be going next - - the following is from Chapter 2 of the newly minted Murky Mandarin SSP, highlighting the relevant obligations of ASA as a State aviation safety service provider as defined in ICAO Annex 19:

2.2 Safety management system obligations

Australia has introduced the requirement for the implementation of SMS in certain sectors of the aviation industry. CASA has introduced the requirement for the following civil aviation service providers to implement SMS:

• ...Air Operators—Civil Aviation Orders (CAO) 82.3 and CAO 82.5 require both high capacity and low capacity RPT operators to establish and maintain appropriate operations with a sound and effective management structure that uses an SMS approved by CASA....
  

• ...Air Traffic Service Providers—CASR Part 172 provides that an air traffic service provider must have, and put into effect, an SMS that includes the policies, procedures, and practices necessary to provide the air traffic services covered by its approval safely...
  

• ...Aerodrome Rescue and Fire Fighting Services (ARFFS)—CASR Subpart 139.H provides that the ARFFS provider must have an SMS consistent with the requirements in the Manual of Standards, including the policies, procedures and practices necessary to provide the service safely...
  

• ...Aeronautical telecommunication and radionavigation service providers – CASR Subpart 171.C requires service providers to have SMS processes in place to assess...
  

These requirements recognise the relevant ICAO SARPs outlined in ICAO Annex 19, Safety Management, and the safety benefits to be gained by the effective establishment by industry of an SMS. Where appropriate this requirement will be extended to additional sections of the industry.

CASA provides a range of support for the implementation of a SMS and continues to develop and review the guidance material to assist industry with their SMS.

More information on Australia's adoption of SMS can be found on CASA's website.

Links to more information about requirements for civil aviation service providers SMS implementation is at Appendix F.

 
Also included in SSP para 2.2 is a short paragraph outlining CASA's oversight obligations of a State service provider's SMS:

Service providers’ safety performance

An important element of a mature system of safety management oversight is agreement between the safety regulator and service providers on the key performance indicators and expected level of performance to be achieved. In the Australian safety regulatory system this level of performance is in part judged by how the service provider delivers against its SMS, therefore oversight of a SMS is included in CASA's audit programme for the operators who are mandated to have a SMS.
(P2 - It would/should be safe to assume that there would also be significant organisational developments within a service provider, such as 900 odd redundancies, which 'should' automatically red flag a need for CASA to facilitate a special audit process.) 

 
  Back to you Ferryman -


MTF...P2

Ps A couple more handy references for you "K" -

Time for the Rev Forsyth to review the review

In particular:

Ps Very soon PAIN & associates will be continuing with the SSP (ICAO Annex 19) review and how it relates to the so called Department action on ASRR recommendations 1 & 2: References -

PAIN/IOS audit of Australia's SSP (ICAO Annex 19)