[Peetwo]

Fort Fumble simplifies fee gouging -

Welcome to the Bureaucratocracy of Australia - 

jonkster:

1. A regulation rewrite by a government body that has taken decades longer than anticipated and is still ongoing (and NZ who did similar achieved and implemented decades faster). At what cost? To achieve not a simpler system but a more arcane one.

2. An aviation industry that is struggling to survive. Closures of maintenance, charter and training organisations across the country. Loss of facilities, skills, corporate knowledge. Loss of public benefit that having a viable GA industry provides.

3. A shortage of pilots in the airlines. Australian flying schools disappearing and talk of having to get overseas pilots to fill vacancies because we are not able to train our own. We used to train not just our own pilots but large numbers of overseas pilots.

4. Regional aviation industries, jobs and services disappearing. Higher costs to regional residents for transport and closures of local business and loss of employers.

5. The body responsible for overseeing the industry keeps growing larger and is imposing more and more onerous restrictions on the industry and there is much doubt within the industry about the actual safety value of those restrictions.

6. Huge antipathy and distrust between the regulatory body and the industry it serves.

7. An industry in crisis that wants a regulatory body that includes in its charter some responsibility for assisting maintain the viability of the industry it serves instead of its current narrow focus on imposing regulation without any need to consider the practical impact of those regulations on the viability of the industry.

8. An industry whose health and viability depends on maintaining a high level of safety but that feels it is having onerous and often poorly thought out regulations imposed on it that are not so much about practical safety outcomes as the appearance and ease of enforcement by the regulator.

9. Governments over decades that have washed their hands and allowed the regulator to continue to act without regard for the viability of the industry because they are too scared to make decisions that may impact safety (or the perception of safety).

10 Handing over of commonwealth aviation assets that have served a vital role in the aviation industry (and its benefit to the community) to private hands who then develop and those assets to maximise their profits in ways that reduce or remove aviation from the facility.

Surely this would make for a great 4 corners program. Particularly close to an election.

Speaking of 4 corners, have just read the transcript from last night's 4C program 'Mongrel bunch of bastards'...

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Those 'standard garnishee notices' and the 'cash grab' statement sound a lot like the many suspicions and hard evidence of 'cost recovery' through 'fee gouging' by CASA ...

The following is a de-identified email correspondence to CASA from an operator trying to renew an expired exemption instrument:

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"...Thanks (CASA Officer),

I’m sure you get push back on this stuff a lot, I recall a similar amount the last time I applied, and I recall the exact reaction the last time I applied.

There is absolutely no way that it could take 2 hours to prepare this 1 sentence letter or that the ‘cost’ is $160 per hour… this is a money grab far beyond the ‘cost’ to prepare.

This hourly rate implies the total cost to employ someone in CASA is $1.6m per annum, I hope you’re getting your fair share! How is this possible? As a tax payer I actually want to know the answer to this…

I hate to imagine what the regulatory cost is for commercial operators with more complex unique circumstances. They should be putting more money into maintenance and pilot training than this crap.

The impact is the opposite to what CASA sets out to achieve, I will not be renewing..."

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Via the Oz today:

CASA to overhaul costs recovery
12:00amANNABEL HEPWORTH
The Civil Aviation Safety Authority is poised to overhaul its cost recovery arrangements. 

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Number of fees to be cut in CASA cost recovery revamp

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority is poised to overhaul its cost recovery arrangements.

The Australian has confirmed that CASA is rationalising the number of fees for regulatory services.

Under the plan, some 360 different fees would be slashed to about 100, and “as many as possible fixed so that industry will have clarity around the charges they would expect to pay to CASA for regulatory services,” a CASA spokesman said.

CASA will consult with the public on any changes through its Cost Recovery Implementation Statement, due out later this year.

CASA expects revenues of $13.9 million in 2017-18 from its existing cost recovery arrangements, which cover service fees and the issue and renewal of aviation identification cards. This rises to $16.5m for 2018-19.

Last year’s landmark general aviation study produced by the Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics pushed for an “examination” of aviation safety regulatory fees, “including a review of the number of hourly rates used by CASA relative to the number of fixed fees and possible removal/­reduction of certain fees for GA”.

However, the government has kept CASA’s current funding ­arrangements in place for 2018-19. In doing so, it cited “increasing pressure on CASA’s budget with the demands arising from the growth of new inter­national and low-cost carriers, together with the continued rapid growth and complexity of drones”.

“These pressures will need to be monitored,” the budget papers say.

As well as the regulatory service fees, CASA receives funds from government coffers and from a 3.556c-per-litre excise on aviation fuel used by domestic aircraft.

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& a Dear Annabelle from Sandy...

Annabelle thank you for the information, in particular for highlighting cost increases. The independent Commonwealth corporation CASA is out of control, a 30 year failed experiment of regulatory governance. Cost recovery used to be called ‘user pays” and CASA has created the worst, unworkable and costly rules which are killing GA (General Aviation). Many unnecessary permissions have been invented which require swingeing upfront application fees. One flying school applicant known to me, a senior instructor, paid $8000 upfront two years ago, still nothing.

Successive hands off Ministers, hiding behind the CASA corporate structure, have done nothing to halt the slide of a once vibrant GA industry.

The irony of cost recovery (fee gouging) by the make work salary factory of CASA is that the loss of tax revenue to government would far outweigh the scroungings out of a bureaucratically crushed industry.

It seemed that Barnaby Joyce was, at long last, going to do something about it, agreeing with Albo to a simple amendment, adding industry sustainability, to the  Civil Aviation Act. Too bad the ‘holier than thou’ mob got the upper hand, new Minister McCormack is the usual do nothing ‘let’s have consultations and I want concensus from industry’ type.

Alex in the Rises.

MTF...P2