Why can Airservices decide what safety services it will provide?
That is like allowing a food manufacturer to decide if botulism is OK in its food or for each car driver to decide what road rules to obey or ignore.
Seriously, Airservices is just a provider of Air Traffic Services; it has NO EXPERTISE in deciding what is required.
Decisions on the services required should be made by experienced aircraft pilots backed up by risk management expertise informed by those pilots.
There is none of that at Airservices.
But we have an Aviation Safety regulator called CASA which has those skills in house.
Next time you are a passenger in an aircraft flying in cloud consider how you feel about other aircraft being in the same cloud without any Air Traffic Control separation service
– just pilots being told about other aircraft and expected to look out the window, see and avoid. Hard to do that in cloud.
In developed places like North America and Europe, every aircraft flying in cloud is provided with an ATC separation service.
That is not always so in Australia precisely because people without the required skills are left to decide what services they feel like providing.
Airservices Act:
“the extent to which AA provides services and facilities is subject to AA's discretion."
Think I’m kidding you?
On 19th February 2020 four people died when two aircraft collided near Mangalore Victoria without an ATC separation service when flying in conditions that precluded self separation.
https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications...ir/ao-2020-012
It could happen any day at Ballina, Gladstone, Orange, Bathurst, Armidale, or any of a host of other regional cities - and it could involve airline aircraft!