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Torres
I agree with your sentiments about the regulatory rewrite program. It has been a debacle for at least 12 years. For 5 of those years Byron has been in charge.
Your comments on CAR 206 are spot on. Despite promise after promise there has been no progress on fixing the problems of CAR 206.
However, the fact is that the regulation rewrite program was just about completed in 1996, when Minister Sharp, aided by AOPA members like Mr Hamilton as well as Mr Munro and the industry representatives on the then PAP successfully managed to scuttle the whole process.
The RSVP as it was called was designed to restructure the existing regulations and Orders into a two-tier FAR format and numbering system so as to make the Australian and US system compatible as far as possible and to place existinbg rules into a two-tier format as far as possible rather than being scattred all over the place (we now have the Act, the 1988 regulations, the 1998 regualtions, the Orders, the MOSs, temporary Orders to plug gaps while the new rules are being prepared etc). No one could have come up with a bigger mess if they planned it themselves.
A lot of this has to do with the lack of any accountability of successive Ministers and Departments to discharge their responsibilities for making regulations and being too frightened of making a decision for fear of offending anyone - but that is what governemt is about - governing in the public ineterest, not to placate particular vocal minorities who are only interested in their own self-importance.
The CASA website provided the following information about the scuttled 1996 program:
"The exercise was about 90% completed when in 1996 the then newly created PAP managed to have the project disbanded. The then Minister formally dropped the RSVP project on 18 December 1996 when he advised the Senate Standing Committee on Regulations and Ordinances that “the draft regulations prepared for the RSVP will not be made into law”.
Since then it has been one debacle after anothet. Byron has been in charge of this for 5 years now and nothing has happened because he no idea what he is doing and neither do those he has put in charge in the regulation rewrite program. The wonderfully m named PAGO (probably should be called POGO) has no idea about regulatory development (what exactly are My Boyd's credentials in regulatory development apart from being a Byron yes man - same with Mr Gratton who can't even read legislation let alone know what it means). But these people are put in charge of the rule rewrite program. Byron's "directives" are typical of an individual who has no idea what he is doing and no idea of what his (ad CASA's) role is in regulatory development- even he doesn't seem to understand what his"diredtives" mean. How much has been spent on the rewrite program in the last 10 years. One or two hundred million dollars would be close to the mark. Good value??
Unfortunately you will never get a set of regulations that are not open to interpretation. This has never happened in area area of legislation and never will happen. The best you can do is to get a set of regulations that are, as far as possible, unambiguous in most instances. This has to be supplement by proper information and education material about the rules (similar to the road traffic experience).
Even those like Mr Hamilton who trot out the old furphy that the FARs are simple and easy to read clearly have little understanding of the FARs. Here is another extract from the CASA website that deals with some of these issues:
"Finally – FAR simplicity and unam\iguous legislation
Mr Hamilton and others have madea lot of unsubstantiated statements aboutthe simplicity and clarity of the FARs. AOPA continually contends that they are easy to comprehend and are written in plain English. This is refuted by the United States itself. In a report to the President of the United States on 12 February 1997, the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security found that the FARs were difficult to understand, were contradictory, open to different interpretations and needed to be rewritten in plain English.
The Commission found that the “current FARs and supporting Handbooks, Technical Standards Orders, Security Directions and Advisory Circulars have become too prescriptive and complex and increasingly open to misinterpretation. Sometimes they provide conflicting policy or procedural advice. In many cases, the FARs do not allow for advances in technology that increases security, safety or efficiency”.
The Commission also rcommended that “a bottom-up review of existing regulations should be conducted to identify those in need of rewriting as performance-based, plain English regulations. Such clarifications would improve and help the FAA resolve serious problems created by differences in interpretation of regulations by FAA officials across the country”.
A good example of the complexity of the FARs can be found in the definition of “public aircraft” in the regulation 1.1 of the FARs. The definition is almost incomprehensible. Perhaps Mr Hamilton can explain it to us:
Public aircraft means an aircraft used only for the United States Government, or owned and operated (except for commercial purposes), or exclusively leased for at least 90 continuous days, by a government (except the United States Government), including a State, the District of Columbia, or a territory or possession of the United States, or political subdivision of that government; but does not include a government-owned aircraft transporting property for commercial purposes, or transporting passengers other than transporting (for other than commercial purposes) crewmembers or other persons aboard the aircraft whose presence is required to perform, or is associated with the performance of, a governmental function such as firefighting, search and rescue, law enforcement, aeronautical research, or biological or geological resource management, or transporting (for other than commercial purposes) persons aboard the aircraft if the aircraft is operated by the Armed Forces or an intelligence agency of the United States. An aircraft described in the preceding sentence shall, notwithstanding any limitation relating to use of the aircraft for commercial purposes, be considered to be a public aircraft for the purpose of this Chapter without regard to whether the aircraft is operated by a unit of government on behalf of another unit of government, pursuant to a cost reimbursement agreement between such units of government, if the unit of government on whose behalf the operation is conducted certifies to the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration that the operation was necessary to respond to a significant and imminent threat to life or property (including natural resources) and that no service by a private operator was reasonably available to meet the threat."
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