Dear Mr Craig Martin, Dr Aleck, and Mr Anthony Mathews,
Please find below my concerns regarding potential breaches of Administrative Law and Procedural Fairness regarding the audit of the Latrobe Valley Base.
Associated documents - Appendix A- Initial notification of intention to shut APTAs operations down.
- Appendix B- Undated audit results provided almost 3 months after audit.
- Appendix C- Audit notes obtained under FOI. The ICC has advised that these notes do not exist, and that no audit was, or results were in CASAs records.
- Appendix D- Rejection letter of my appeal to obtain audit results.
- Appendix E- Link to CASA Surveillance Manual.
- https://www.casa.gov.au/sites/defaul...nce-manual.pdf
- Appendix F- Link to CASA Enforcement Manual
- https://www.casa.gov.au/publications...rcement-manual
CASA conducted an audit at our Latrobe Valley base, on 03/09/18 and identified no safety issues or regulatory breaches. They only identified a minor administrative issue with one of our in-house exams. We were advised that a written report would follow, as is the standard CASA procedure. No safety concerns or regulatory breaches were identified.
My understanding is that CASA procedures state that the onsite exit meeting is required to identify all raised issues i.e. no hidden surprises.
We elected to rectify the minor administrative issue immediately in anticipation of receiving the report, which never came. Our assumption was that as the matters were so minor, CASA may have elected not to issue a written report.
What did arrive however on 23/10/18, was a letter indicating that the entire operation was to be potentially shut down in 7 days, and the CASA Region Manager identified that the Latrobe Valley audit results were used as the basis of that determination.
I identified that this seemed excessive in light of such a minor matter being identified, and a meeting with CASA personnel was arranged in the CASA Regional Office at Melbourne on 18/11/18.
At that meeting the CASA Executive Manager queried the CASA Region Manager as to the nature of the audit, and the Region Manager clearly identified it as a level 2 audit (second highest level).
The Regional Manager at that meeting, expressed the CASA concern that there were incorrect and outdated Latrobe Valley forms everywhere. Interestingly that was a new topic not raised at the verbal debrief on site at LTV on the day, and that complaint did not resurface in the subsequently produced audit results. I was concerned by the everchanging narrative.
The CASA Executive Manager asked the Region Manager for a copy of the audit results. It became immediately obvious that CASA had omitted to provide us with the audit result, despite it being the basis of CASAs determination that APTA would potentially be directed to cease operations. It then became obvious that the audit results had not been completed, and the CASA Executive Manager directed the Region Manager to get his staff to prepare those results over the weekend and provide them to me early the following week.
Those “undated” audit results were subsequently provided. They were undated and were not in the standard format that audit results would normally be provided. It is important to note that these results were written up and provided almost 3 months after the original audit date. I was surprised to see that those audit results were undated.
On production of these notes written up, well after the event, a number of new allegations were raised. These included allegations of breaches of
CASR 141.310, CASR 142.390, CASR 117, CASR 141.260, and CASR 142.340.
I was perplexed as to how completely new allegations could arise, so long after the audit. I felt that was a breach of procedural fairness and administrative law. A number of requests were made by me to obtain further information to resolve these unfounded allegations. CASA repeatedly ignored all my requests. I believe the reason CASA refused to respond despite numerous requests, is because they were false allegations. I was confident that CASA would not be able to support them. The new allegations were substantive in nature, but there was no supporting evidence.
On 20/11/18, in the contents of an email, Mr David Jones, the CASA Region Manager stated that “the assessment of the Latrobe Valley Aero Club was used as the basis of seeking CASA legal advice…” I question how the audit results can be used by CASA to shut down my operation without me having had the “right of reply”. This appeared to be a breach of my rights under Administrative law and procedural fairness.
On 28/11/18,The Regional Manager now raises completely new allegations and substantial allegations that differ to the original allegations made on site at Ballarat and Latrobe , which differed to the allegations made at our meeting, which differed to the allegations made in writing. The new allegations were about flight and duty times, and in an email he stated; “These anomalies should be known by Ermin (as the APTA HOO) as there were problems identified with the FSM system and Flight and Duty (F&D) management, in particular associated to the F&D exceedances”.
On receipt of that email I immediately knew that it was a false statement and that it should be known to be untruthful at the time of writing. Despite numerous requests to have those allegations substantiated with any evidence, none will be forthcoming as it was a blatant untruth. My concerns being that once again it appeared the Regional Manager was trying to “paint a picture.” He also cast aspersions on my HOO by stating “should be known by Ermin”. CASA had not sent any audit results, so how could he possibly know. The deficiency was on CASAs behalf, not ours!
I complained to the CASA Industry Complaints Commissioner who initiated an investigation. On completion of the ICC investigation he wrote back to me and included the following statement “
there’s no record of the documents I would expect to see if a level 2 had been commenced in CASAs Sky Sentinel surveillance database….”
This seemed absurd to me, so I made a Freedom of Information Request to obtain those documents so that I could attend to CASAs false and unsubstantiated allegations. On 21/12/19 I received the response to my FOI request and was provided with over 7 pages of completely redacted results.
You will appreciate my confusion
CASA identify that they have conducted a level 2 audit, and used those results as the basis for action taken against APTA.
CASA then identify that in fact the audit results were not written up, and they were not provided to me. CASA undertake to provide me with post written audit notes, which bore no resemblance to the initial on site verbal report.
I ask for the original results, and the ICC has informed me that nothing was initiated, although when I make a claim under FOI, I am provided with over 7 pages of redacted results. Quite simply, it appeared that elements within CASA had been untruthful in their engagement with me.
CASA have consistently and repeatedly ignored all requests for the specifics of the breech. I am strongly of the opinion that they cannot be substantiated, and therefore no matter how many requests I make, they will never be able to address the outstanding allegations.
I am seeking an explanation to this process, because it appears to me that there were significant breaches of CASA procedures, and I feel that the personnel I was dealing with were not acting with good intent.