Part 1 of 3 Hansard Report Senate Estimates Presentation by Glen Buckley
BUCKLEY, Mr. Glen, Private capacity
[12:40]
Evidence was taken via teleconference—
CHAIR: Welcome. Do you have any comments to make on the capacity in which you appear?
Mr Buckley: I'm appearing in the capacity as a private individual and somebody that's spent 25 years working in the aviation industry.
CHAIR: Thank you. I invite you to make a brief opening statement before the committee asks questions. Do you wish to make an opening statement?
Mr Buckley : Yes, I'd like to take advantage of that. Thank you.
CHAIR: Please go ahead.
Mr Buckley : I realise this isn't a 21st birthday speech—this is something somewhat more substantial than that—but I would like to take the opportunity to thank some people, particularly Senator Susan McDonald. I realize these sorts of issues aren't things that attract a lot of votes in your electorate. They're bigger picture things that take ethics and integrity, so I want to thank you for that. Senator Glenn Sterle, I don't think you will remember me, but I came into your office about two years ago with another aviation gentleman. You spent time taking me around parliament and spent a lot of time with me. I came home after having a very inspirational day so I have a lot of trust and confidence in you. I met you. Thank you for being on board today.
I want to thank [inaudible] a couple of pilot forums: PPRuNe, Aunty Pru—a couple of organizations that are behind me—all the people that trained together, established a crowdfunding page, and contributed to that crowdfunding page. Probably more important than the financial contributions they made are the comments that they made. They meant a lot to me. I want to thank all my friends, everybody in the general aviation industry that stood up to get behind me. As you may be aware, I've got a forum going that's had close to 700,000 views 1,500 comments. The support's been exceptional.
I also want to apologise. I want to apologise to all of the people that've been [inaudible] to the supply of the business, the value [inaudible] my customers, my family, my parents, my children, my kids' school. Everybody's been impacted by the story that I'm about to tell you. Everything I say today is absolutely truthful. I can support everything I say in writing. This is the truth. This is about intent. If you ask me a question I'll answer in the intent that you want me to answer. I won't try and cover anything up and I will be truthful. I understand that this privilege afforded to me today gives me access to parliamentary privilege and I'm somewhat protected from the comments that I say. I don't want that protection. I want to send a very clear message to Mr Carmody, the CEO of CASA. I am waiving my right to any sort of parliamentary privilege to give my story the credibility that it deserves. You are welcome to initiate any legal action against me at the conclusion of this—
CHAIR: Sorry, Mr. Buckley, you don't need to go down that path. This is a Senate inquiry. Leave it as it is and you continue with your evidence.
Mr Buckley : Okay. This is a prepared statement I want to say. It's fairly brief. While I appreciate the diversity of the experience before me, I cannot reasonably expect you to be subject matter experts on flight training and aviation safety matters. Irrespective of that, you will have an appreciation of the importance of a productive relationship between the regulator and the industry that is regulating, be that aviation, trucking or any other industry. A relationship of mutual respect, trust, and good intention will irrefutably enhance good safety outcomes. If the culture of Australia's national aviation safety regulator, CASA, could be demonstrated to be unsafe, that it did not act in good faith, did not follow clearly stipulated procedures, denied individuals their rights under administrative law procedural fairness, and natural justice; if it could be proven that CASA has done this to many individuals and small business owners in Australia, not just me; if it could be proven those actions were unlawful and couldn't be justified on the basis of any desired safety outcome; if it could be proven those actions cost businesses and jobs; if it could be proven CASA acted vindictively and vexatiously, then you would be compelled to act, as you will be. I'll call on both of you at the end of this. Before I proceed, I want to be perfectly clear, as Mr Carmody will present before you shortly, I put the question to him to clearly outline any safety case 'for the action that you took against me' and clearly outline any regulatory breaches.
I'll talk to you about the business of what APTA was. CASA introduced a regulatory change called part 61, part 141 and part 142. It came in a decade behind schedule, hundreds of millions of dollars over budget and was uniformly rejected by the industry, and CASA will admit the failure of it. It massively increased the cost of running a flying school. The regulatory burden was very, very high. In fact, the regulations meant all flying schools in Australia had to close down in three years unless they complied with the regulations.
I approached CASA and I put to them a concept I was going to call the Australian Pilot Training Alliance. I was going to take my existing flying school, Melbourne Flight Training, and morph it to the Australian Pilot Training Alliance. It was a registered training organisation and had CRICOS approval to train overseas students. In conjunction with 10 CASA personnel over two years and an investment by me of many hundreds of thousands of dollars, I built APTA. It was fully approved by CASA. CASA recommended members to join APTA. The best analogy that I can give is that APTA is probably somewhat like IGA is in the supermarket industry. I took all the powerful approvals that I had in my school of 10 years and put them up the top and provided the opportunity for 10 schools to join underneath. I had full accountability for the entire operation. As I said, CASA helped me design it. They approved the basis to operate under it, and that business operated.
On 23 October 2018, with absolutely no warning at all—not on the basis of any regulatory breaches and not on the basis of safety, Mr Jonathan Aleck, the executive manager of legal international and regulatory affairs at CASA had a change of mind. He will be appearing before you shortly. Ask him what the regulatory support of what he did to me was. There is nothing. He has no rules. The Civil Aviation Act requires one of the functions of CASA to be to provide clear and concise aviation safety standards. I expect Mr Jonathan Aleck, before you shortly, to be able to show you the rules that were broken. There were none. Their conduct was vindictive and vexatious.
I'm jumping around a little bit here, but I want to talk about what APTA did for flying schools in regional areas of Victoria. The cost of running a flying school has gone through the roof. I felt it in my own flying schools. Consider an aero club. It's made up of the local insurance broker, a local farmer and the shop owners—local people come together in a rural aero club to enjoying flying together. It's an important part of these communities. These aero clubs can't keep up with CASA legislative compliance. The constant changes and the restrictions are too burdensome for them. They want to be running aero clubs, having competition days and flyaways and getting around to the bar at night-time and having a chat. That's what APTA was supposed to give them. CASA should have supported this. I was going to take all the compliance and safety responsibility for the operation and let them go about running their aero clubs.