Jim, I don't know if there is any other way to reset the CASA's goals without some sort of public show. That's the CASA's lot. They're adults and they can live with it. The execs are paid the big bucks in part to cop it on the chin through Parlimentary privelege or not. Pay me the same amount and I'll stand up and waffle on with some management doublespeak about realignments, restructures and co-operative partnership male bovine excrement in front of politicians. Byron is the guy in charge. He set the direction. Yes, the previous ministers should wear a substantial amount of blame, but Byron is the guy in charge. Why is he the CEO if he can't handle responsibility and blame? Ultimately, if he didn't agree with Ministerial directions, then he should have resigned. What you're stating is similar to agreeing with the pilot who after flying a plane into a hill in cloud blamed the company manager for making him do it.
The Labor Party would be accused of petty vindictiveness if it went after the previous Ministers, and what would it achieve anyway? It would certainly give the green light to subsequent retaliatory accusations for the next Minister or party in power.
If anything, this inquiry has been nothing more than a slap on the wrist to the CASA. It got off very lightly. Too lightly in my mind.
In his evidence and tendered documents Byron sought to redefine CASA’s role from being an enforcer of the air safety laws to that of a co-operative mentoring industry partner urging the airlines to deliver safety outcomes on its behalf.
"In the past there has been a mindset, both within CASA and some people in the industry, that safety was primarily the concern of the regulator and the regulations ... this mindset is flawed and naïve," Byron said.
I think Byron's mindset is flawed and naive. It's a concillatory cop-out of convenience. If the CASA is redefined from an enforcer of the air safety laws to a co-operative mentoring partner, then take it to its logical conclusion over time. Companies will see the CASA as an expense and argue it can do the same comfortably on its own. The CASA is becoming nothing more than a rubberstamp to its major "customers": a third-party authentication of a certain expectation of standards, where the "customer" can unduly influence the expectations. The trouble with this philosophy is that through an industry partnership, many of these standards appear to be for very specific commercial expediance rather than serious risk mitigation and generic industry benefit.
I think what the inquiry has completely missed is an opportunity to recommend a framework to strengthen the CASA to be a sound regulator. I would like to think it encourages a change of direction reasonably soon, otherwise we'll be going through this entire process again in a few years.
The CASA not only needs to enforce the laws so that the travelling public have faith in Australia's aviation industry, but it needs to greatly improve on encouraging new laws and law changes to remove outdated obstacles to modern commercial operations and equipment. By striving to be a partner in safety, the CASA has achieved prominance instead by becoming a huge promoter of the status quo, a hindrance to commercial innovation and a huge roadblock to further competitiveness and industry evolution.
Byron has tried to palm-off his partnership program as a way of improving safety. What rubbish! The partnership program has been nothing more than a means of maintaining paperwork and a ministerial reporting structure when the organisation has been gutted by continuous budget cuts and a greedy executive body focussed on year-end bonuses.