In an article in the September/October 2018 issue of
Australian Flying headed “Monck on changing the Act” it states that he is not supporting my proposed change to the Act.
That is, the change to remove the “lie” in the Act’s wording that "CASA must regard the safety of air navigation as the most important consideration." (By the way, the September/October 2018 issue of Australian Flying is of the best issues that has ever come out – it would have taken a lot of hard work. Congratulations to everyone involved.)
Michael says
:
“… I think by making the Act dual purpose, I think we are opening ourselves up to trouble like we saw in the US…”
In fact removing the lie doesn’t make the act dual purpose. It simply means that it tells the truth. That is, in many cases cost is the limiting factor, not safety.
Yes, the FAA had the words "foster and promote aviation" and the bureaucrats used that to claim that the reason an airline crashed is that they were fostering and promoting someone that was not safe. What a con.
The agreement I had with Anthony Albanese and Barnaby Joyce was really simple. It made it clear that no longer could the CASA bureaucracy hide behind the lie that safety is the most important consideration.
I could understand RA-Aus wanting to keep CASA on side at the present time. However even if I were one of the many at CASA that wanted to fix some of the problems, I would be supporting the change of the Act to tell the truth.
It is interesting that when I was Chairman of both CAA and CASA, some of the most important changes I tried to bring in to reduce costs were actually opposed by those in the industry who thought they benefited by keeping CASA bureaucrats on side. I tried to explain to these people that by actually reducing costs and getting more people flying that the industry would be able to boom again and everyone would benefit. Unfortunately I didn’t succeed.