I'm a big fan of Senator Patrick, but this proposal is laughable. CASA will be stocking up on popcorn, already, to watch this play out.
The Bill, if passed by the Parliament, will give
the Minister work to do! That'll get CASA worried.
The Minister's got to "conduct an independent review to examine how US Federal Aviation Authority regulations can be translated into the Australian context." That's independent of CASA, so no work for CASA to do there. And, given the importance of the review and its potential results, CASA should probably 'pause' any ongoing work on e.g. medical certification or independent instructor regulations. After all, more work could be nugatory if there's going to be some 'sledgehammer' put to the current regulations.
To whom will the Minister turn? I reckon he'll turn to the likes of the Attorney-General's Department and the Office of Parliamentary Counsel and the Minister's own Department and say: "Make the review happen!" Surely another Forsyth-style review would be practically pointless, given that its recommendations were practically ignored.
I confidently predict that if the review proceeds, the outcome will be good news: The FARs can be translated into the Australian context!
And the even better news is that the way to go about it is the way in which CASA has been going about it for the last decades! Look at this, from
CASA's own consultation document on Part 43:
CASA has also conducted a detailed technical review of the US-FARs. CASA considers the US-FARs to be a well-established set of regulations, readily accepted by the FAA and US industry alike, with sound policies, clear requirements, scalability across a wide range of aircraft and operations, pathways for industry growth, and good safety outcomes that are historically slightly better than those in Australia.
A Technical Working Group (TWG) appointed by the Aviation Safety Advisory Panel met in September 2018, reviewed the consultation feedback and considered the policy options. As a result of the technical review and this industry consultation and engagement, the US-FARs have been confirmed as the best model on which to base the proposed new maintenance regulations for GA.
...
CASA will incorporate the adopted FAR regulations into the Civil Aviation Safety Regulations 1998 (CASR) with as little amendment as possible. CASA expects to create a new CASR Part 43, reflecting US-FAR Part 43.
Changes will only be made:
• where words, titles, phrases or legal terminology are incompatible with Australian legal terms
• to clarify the current FAR including removing ambiguity or uncertainty
• to make necessary formatting, paragraph structure and numbering changes
• to incorporate any differences to the proposed policy outcomes that have been consulted with the GA sector.
Alas, those dot points (and all the stuff around structuring offence provisions) are why the end-product bears little semblance to the FARs. And it's driven by.... Attorney-Generals and the Office of Parliamentary Counsel and the Department.
The only dot point over which CASA has any substantive control is the last one. That's the one where cattle prods and whips should be used to control people with 'bright ideas' about how Australia can do it 'better'.