Dick Smith nominated by the Australian newspaper for Australian of the Year

[Sandy Reith]

Seems like the Oz has GA reform in it’s sights by recognising Dick’s ongoing and long term fight for a new approach in aviation reform.
Quote article; “You look around the world, copy the best, and employ the best people,” he said.

Mr Smith said that as chairman of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, he’d battled to do just that with aviation regulation reform, aiming to “do everything we can at the lowest cost” without compromising safety. Instead his successors in the authority had, he claimed, “quickly looked around the world and selected the most expensive option”, imposing so much cost on aviation that it was killing the industry.

Yet he has not given up.

Dick Smith is one of The Australian’s Australian of the Year nominees.”

As a former GA business owner operator, on my own airport, with CFI CP and CASA testing approvals, flying school, charter and scheduled services, I can certainly attest to the mindless over regulation of the GA industry which has lead to a disastrous loss of jobs and businesses across the last 30 years.
The 30 yo experiment of an independent regulator Commonwealth corporate body, originally cast as a Government Business Enterprise (laughably), a monopoly that would be illegal in the private sphere, is a failure.
Consider that when created CASA was tasked with rewriting the rules, 30 years on, hundreds of $millions wasted, still not finished and the latest batch promolgated in 2014 in the words of Chairman Jeff Boyd “a mess.”
One senior instructor nearby had to put up $8000 in front with an application for a flying school Air Operators Certificate, 18 months later still nothing. In the US that qualified instructor can simply commence to teach without an ‘AOC’ and according to John King of US flying training fame (John & Martha King) some 70% of US pilots are taught by independent instructors. Is it any wonder that where there were hundreds if not thousands of flying schools we are down to few handfuls? Is it any wonder that there are insufficient pilots for our airlines?
CASA in it’s present form is a fee gouging make work salary factory, Change the Act the only hope.
I should add that during Dick Smith’s tenure in CASA some broad commonsense policy started to appear from the regulator. When he left the whole shooting match reverted to its ‘natural bureaucratic’ trajectory; downhill. The downhill slope now drastically steeper with the infamous 2014 batch of hopeless new rules. ‘Way back when’ CASA were allowed to inappropriately migrate virtually all the regs into the criminal code and caused them to be of strict liability. All against the Commonwealth’s own guidelines and principles of justice such as punishment to fit the crime. Mr. Carmody CEO of CASA talks about some reforms to this and proposes a new private pilot medical regime which would be a great improvement but bizarrely, in effect, would encourage pilots to drop their IFR and Night ratings. Meanwhile most of the last few flying schools trying to transition to the unworkable 2014 Part 61 will simply die. Without urgent political intervention General Aviation cannot rebuild and serve the community with the jobs and businesses that are so profoundly needed.
Maybe Dick Smith’s profile can elevate the plight of GA with the public sufficient to cause government to change the Civil Aviation Act. Apart from any other considerations this is a very good reason to support him.