[Peetwo]

Fresh off the Yaffa -

Minister Paul Fletcher MP (left) and AOPA President Marc De Stoop (right) met in Canberra last Friday.


AOPA President meets with Minister over Project Eureka
05 Apr 2016

Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) President Marc De Stoop met with the Department of Infrastructure and Transport last Friday to present an outline of Project Eureka, AOPA's plan for revitalising general aviation in Australia.

De Stoop handed Minister for Major Projects, Territories and Local Government Paul Fletcher MP a letter outlining AOPA's plan and discussed opportunities to create employment within GA.

According to De Stoop, the meeting was "not just a meet and greet"

"He was across some of the issues and listened well," De Stoop said. "He knew NZ were doing a lot better than us in GA.

"Big picture stuff is what he is interested in. He needs to be convinced the industry is worth reviving to create those jobs. I promised [Project] Eureka would propose a path for this outcome."

In the letter, De Stoop and AOPA outlined Project Eureka, the brief of which is due to be complete next week.

"Project Eureka is a brief to government containing policy proposals and initiatives to revitalise this flagging Australian industry: an industry that has been in constant and unabated decline over the last 30 years," the letter states.

"The industry recognises there is no easy solution to the current situation. It is made up of many sectors that all have to work or prosper together to create a vibrant GA industry."

When completed, Project Eureka is expected to target nine areas of the general aviation industry that AOPA believes are in need of reform:

• Flight Regulations and Operations
  
• Industry Funding and Taxes
  
• Airport and General Aviation Business Security and Tenure
  
• Charter and Airwork Operations
  
• Flight Training
  
• Aviation Medicine
  
• Airspace Management
  
• Engineering/Manufacturing
  
• Future Technologies
  
  

AOPA describes Project Eureka as "a last stand against inappropriate government industry regulation that has decimated our once thriving GA industry." It would appear that AOPA has decided to do something different to get the message through.

"Chatting to the regulators for the last 15 years has not got GA anywhere with appropriate regulatory reform," De Stoop told Australian Flying.

"We are trying a different approach to get our message across about the perilous state of GA in this country.

"At the end of the day the government wants to create high value jobs for the Australian economy. That's what we want being generated from a healthy GA business sector.

De Stoop pointed out that the meeting with Minister Fletcher and the letter were not intended to be critical of CASA Director of Aviation Safety Mark Skidmore, but rather were aimed at a bureaucratic system that resisted reform.

"It’s not a personal attack on Mark Skidmore. I think he is personally trying to achieve reform. He can’t do it satisfactorily under the current semi-autonomous monopoly model the government has created. No minister is game to meddle with them.

"They need to realize the industry is their customer and completely change their attitude to doing business. They also need to acknowledge safety is enhanced by training, collaboration and helping industry rather than writing volumes of penal code."

The full text of the AOPA letter to Minister Fletcher is available from the AOPA website.

PP (ProAviation) on Dick Smith lawyer's letter to DAS Skidmore :

“See you in court” – Dick’s new challenge to CASA

 

Dick Smith (yes, That Dick Smith) has launched a Federal Court challenge to CASA’s director and its legal team over the regulator’s long-disputed decision (the ‘area VHF direction’) to assign already busy VHF (very high frequency) radio frequencies to aircraft flying at or in the vicinity of non-controlled aerodromes that don’t have a discrete common traffic advisory frequency (CTAF) and are not depicted on aeronautical charts.

The debate on this issue has been long-standing and ProAviation has never seen any meaningful regulatory response to the well-reasoned opposition it has generated from affected industry organisations and operators. That opposition debates safety fears related to frequency congestion with large numbers of aircraft on the same frequencies in environments where they may not all be geographically able to communicate with one another or other aircraft on different channels.

That decision appears to be embodied in the NOTAM (notice to airmen) C119/14 issued by CASA in July 2014, and changes to the Aeronautical Information Publication (AIP) made at CASA’s instance in May 2013 and in August 2014.

“It appears to our client that in making the decision, CASA failed to act within with the limits of its statutory authority, and either took into account irrelevant considerations, or failed to consider relevant considerations, or both.”

The letter details Dick’s views that the area VHF direction was made potentially without due legal head of power, that formal industry consultation processes were circumvented or ignored, that there is at the very least, disagreement within the aviation industry stakeholders as to whether the area VHF direction complies with CASA’s obligations under the Civil Aviation Act, that CASA decision-making processes have been non-transparent in areas that affect airspace use decisions and related communications between aircraft and ground stations, apparent noncompliance with CASA’s own Australian Airspace Policy Statement (AAPS.)

In a letter copied to CASA’s head lawyer Adam Anastasi and to incoming Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Darren Chester, Dick’s lawyers Mark O’Brien Legal give the regulator notice that “If we do not have a satisfactory response within fourteen days of the date of this letter, we have instructions to commence proceedings in the Federal Court of Australia, with no further notice to you, to judicially review CASA’s decision.

“Our client has standing, as a person who is affected by CASA’s decision, to seek relief in the form of constitutional writs, including that the decision of CASA be quashed and re-made according to law.”

A judicial review such as the one Dick is seeking could see senior aviation bureaucrats responding under oath to numerous assertions contained in the letter; in particular whether CASA’s actions are consistent with its obligations under the Civil Aviation Act and Regulations.

Although Dick owns his own small fleet of general aviation aircraft, he reserves his sympathies for those on aviation who are less fortunate in the face of our fast-expanding aviation bureaucracies. He told ProAviation recently:

“There is simply no understanding at Airservices and at CASA or in the Department that cost is so important for general aviation. Misallocate $100 million in relation to the airlines and that’s either $1 or $2 per passenger and hardly noticeable. Misallocate $100 million in General Aviation and you don’t have an industry anymore.

“There is no understanding of this within these three organisations and that’s why things are going to get far worse before they get better.”

MTF...P2