[P7_TOM]

Cracking good post P2 – Tim Tam plus quality.  I’ll follow it up with one, equally good from the inestimable ‘Lead Balloon’ (on UP… )  who neatly puts it all back into it’s nut-shell.


Well done both, sometimes it all even seems worth the trouble and effort.  Bravo.

I have to disagree on at least one point.

"Frank and honest" would have been an acknowledgement of the fact - because it is a fact - that the regulatory reform program is an abject failure when measured against almost all of, if not all of, its stated aims.

"Frank and honest" would have been an acknowledgment of the fact - because it is a fact - that no amount of restructuring will ever render CASA competent to achieve the stated aims of the regulatory reform program. CASA has neither the expertise nor resources to do the job competently, no matter how the organisation is structured.

Either Mr Skidmore does not understand these facts - in which case he's not very smart - or he does understand them - in which case my opinion is that he's not being entirely frank.

Given his adoption of the same kind of spin as was spoon fed to and regurgitated by his predecessors, and given the resort to the standard look-busy tactic for achieving permanent improvements "a couple of years from now" - a restructure - my opinion is he's smart but not being entirely frank.

From my perspective, "frank and honest" would have been: "Diversion of further CASA resources to the regulatory reform program would be throwing good money out after bad. The current mess is a less bad outcome than spending more millions and decades on creating an even bigger mess. Fortunately the Australian aviation sector has continued to be very safe, despite the unnecessary distraction caused by the almost constant change, new complexity and unintended consequences of the program so far. But the fact is that the distraction has been unnecessary, as there has been no measurable, causal improvement in safety outcomes, despite the enormous consequential costs - in time, money and lost and ruined business within the industry. I have therefore terminated the program so far as CASA is concerned."

And this is one of the many reasons for the ongoing lack of trust of CASA.

When almost the entirety of the industry knows, from bitter, expensive and stressful experience, over decades, that the rhetoric about the regulatory reform program is almost invariably empty, more of it does not help.

The problem is the paradigm, not the people. That's why changing the people has not helped. Mr Skidmore could be the smartest and most honest person on the planet, but that wouldn't fix the problem.

The problem is that a regulatory reform program should not be run the regulator. The setting of regulatory standards is a political process and decision, not a technical process and decision.

CASA is not competent to, for example, decide on the standards for aeromedical operations. It is not competent, for a number of fundamental reasons. The simplest of those reasons is that CASA does not have access to all of the data necessary to make a properly-informed decision. The second simplest reason is that CASA does not have the authority to make cost/benefit/risk trade offs in other sectors, like the resourcing of road emergency transport and local hospitals, which trade-offs impact on where the standards for aeromedical operations should be set. (All of this is merely another way of saying it's a political decision, not a technical decision.)

So even though:

(1) it has suited successive governments to abdicate its standards-setting responsibilities to CASA, and thereby to shift the focus of responsibility to CASA, and

(2) there seems to be an endless supply of skygods willing to shoulder that responsibility, and

(3) there are still people who consider that throwing more money at CASA and hanging on for another couple of decades is the only option,

the fact remains that CASA is not and will never be competent to run the regulatory reform program.

So I agree with you when you say that none of us could do any better than Mr Skidmore, at least in respect of the regulatory reform program. But that's because it's not possible for anybody to structure and run a regulator so as to competently run a regulatory reform program. I'm utterly sick of skygods pretending they can