From the heart - For & on behalf of Ben Morgan via the Oz 
Quote:Ministers must act now to cut aviation red tape
It is time for the major political parties to sit down, listen and act.
- Benjamin Morgan
- The Australian
- 12:00AM July 8, 2016
As an aviation business owner and industry leader, I have become disillusioned with the quagmire of unnecessary bureaucracy and regulation that is suffocating general aviation and sending it bankrupt.
And I have become disillusioned by the lack of any serious political leadership shown on the issues that are affecting us so greatly.
On May 6, I organised an aviation rally at Tamworth Regional Airport to highlight the desperate state of our industry and to call on Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce and Infrastructure and Regional Development Minister Darren Chester to take action.
At the conclusion of that rally, the ministers invited the industry to meet in Canberra to discuss the issues. However, away from the cameras and the media, both declined to attend that meeting. Rather, industry was relegated to dealing with bureaucrats from the Department of Transport and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, both of which are responsible for the present precarious state of our industry.
The meeting in Canberra simply confirmed our concerns: that our sector is governed by a department and a regulator that are deeply disconnected from the realities and challenges facing general aviation. For too long, successive governments have been content to rely on the CASA and its associated agencies. This is fine for government but abrogating ministerial responsibility has allowed agencies, particularly the CASA, to run unchecked.
Ministers have sat on their hands and turned a blind eye to the outrageous cost of regulatory reform. It has been estimated that more than $300 million of taxpayer money has been spent over the past three decades on yet-to-be-completed aviation regulatory reform.
The industry is in open rebellion against the impractical, overly-prescriptive, incomprehensible rule set, especially rules that relate to aircraft maintenance, pilot fatigue and licensing.
More than ever our industry requires a strong and clear political intervention to end the bureaucratic nightmare.
It is time the major political parties sat down with industry and formed a serious partnership to tackle the issues facing aviation. It is time government worked towards reforming the regulatory frameworks to ensure Australians have opportunity in front of them, not behind.
Benjamin Morgan is a director of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association and the chief executive of the Aviation Advertiser, an aircraft sales and marketing service used by more than 94,000 aircraft owners across the country