[Peetwo]

Update: Also hot off the Yaffa is this from Dougy: Editor's Insights 9 July 2015

Err Dougy don't you think that is the point of the whole exercise, example see here from near the start of the Dick Smith campaign: Dick Smith QON on the UP (26 May '15)

Warren Truss – What Does He Believe In?

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Can anyone advise me if, in the ten years Warren Truss has been either Minister or Shadow Minister responsible for aviation - he has ever articulated a view on any substantive issue that he believes in and that affects us in aviation? That is, has Warren Truss ever identified with one statement or one issue that he could be held accountable for?

Over the years I and others have given Warren Truss very thorough briefings on everything from airspace to rescue and firefighting, to Unicoms and Part 61 and the unique, costly ADS-B requirements for general aviation. Yet I don’t believe he has ever made one statement that illustrates his views on these issues. For example, has he ever made a comment about Part 61? Or the ADS-B mandate for general aviation aircraft?

Warren Truss is paid more than $300,000 a year and knows that, just like his predecessors, after he completes his term he will no doubt end up with a prodigious and highly paid position on the Virgin Airlines Board or chairing some type of fracking company destroying our valuable and productive rural land.

From time to time journalists phone me to ask my view on some aviation regulatory issue. I suggest they phone the Minister, but the journalists invariably don’t even know who the Minister is! Why a person would want to be in this important position but then actually not have any stated view that could help Australia is beyond me.

I am planning to give a number of talks around Australia and I want to know if ever in the last ten years Warren Truss (Deputy Prime Minister - unbelievable!) has made a statement in relation to aviation that he could actually be held accountable for. That is, I want to find out if there is one statement Warren Truss has ever made that depicts what he actually believes in relation to aviation. Or has he been cautioned by his political advisors not to go down that route, you know, in true “Yes Minister” style - i.e. the dishonest, never-say-anything-that-actually-means-something approach? But surely there must be something!!

or even earlier here: Nick Xenophon - The surrogate Minister for Aviation?? post#23

Dougy to firstly correct the record I think you will find that News Corp have sponsored the review the Australian airspace management by ATC expert Jeff Griffiths. Next if you go here you will see that Dick Smith appeared only yesterday in other News Corp publications.
Finally to perhaps further reinforce my assertions (above post) that Dick (supported by News Corp) has a far bigger agenda than just attacking ASA, please read the following... :

Inspection edict ‘tearing light aircraft apart’  

• by: EAN HIGGINS
  
• From: The Australian
  
• July 10, 2015 12:00AM
  

Reporter
Sydney



Tony Brand, director of Horsham Aviation Services, says a new inspection regime is driving operators out of general aviation. Picture: Aaron Francis Source: News Corp Australia

In general aviation circles they’re calling it SIDS — and it’s leaving the carcasses of light aircraft, some with their engines gone, some with tails and wings amputated, strewn around regional ­airports.  

SIDS stands for Supplementary Inspection Documents, and according to Tony Brand, who runs light aircraft repair and maintenance company Horsham Aviation Services in western ­Victoria, it’s killing the industry.

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority is enforcing a program initiated by the large US light ­aircraft manufacturer Cessna of ­special inspections of its older aircraft to check for problems like corrosion, wear, cracks, and other mechanical risks.

In Australia, Mr Brand said, that covers 3800 Cessna aircraft, and $285 million in additional compliance work.

“There was no industry consultation for this,” he said.

For Mr Brand SIDS means boom times, with his 11 aircraft mechanics including two apprentices working flat-out on aircraft flown in from all around the ­country.

“I could put on another five people tomorrow and still not keep up with the work,” he said.

But his concern is that SIDS will financially cripple many of his customers. “It’s driving people out of the general aviation industry one after the other,” Mr Brand said.

“They have just got it so wrong you wouldn’t believe.”

Flying school operators who spoke with The Australian this week all complained about SIDS.

“I had to take one plane ­completely apart then put it back together again and it cost me $30,000,” said Ray Clamback, who runs a flying school at Sydney’s Bankstown airport.

“It turned out there was nothing wrong with it.”

Mr Brand said the cost of SIDS was leading some aircraft owners to sell their planes overseas in countries such as the US where the program initiated by Cessna is not mandatory as it is here, but voluntary.

Other older aircraft are just not worth taking abroad, and those are being cannabilised for parts, explaining the carcasses.

CASA chairman Jeff Boyd said it was not the original deliberate intention to make SIDS compulsory, but it ended up so because of the regulatory structure.

“It just got caught up in the way our regulations are written,” Mr Boyd said.

He nonetheless defended the compulsory nature of the ­program here, saying it was essential to deal with a real safety issue.

Mr Boyd, a licensed aircraft mechanical engineer and former regional airline owner, said he had done the SIDS exercise ­himself on the 1977 Cessna 172XP he owns and flies.
He used it as an opportunity to fully renovate the aircraft.

Mr Brand is scathing of the people he describes as technocrats at CASA who have “not worked a day in general aviation, in the hangar.”

But Mr Brand has nothing but praise for Mr Boyd who has worked in the hangar, and still does from time to time as a ­consultant, such as oversighting maintenance for the Thai military.

Mr Boyd, Mr Brand said, was bringing some much needed real world private sector sense to those technocrats.

“He’s been doing an excellent job,” he said.

Hmm...don't think Airservices was mentioned once in that Higgins article...

MTF..P2