Gunnadothat, you anonymously quote a so-called conversation with me and you are not even prepared to put your own name to your comment.
To other readers, the quote is wrong and completely the opposite to my view. As a Chairman I would have far preferred to deal with two unions – for obvious reasons. If one goes on strike you can quite often use people from the other union to provide a service.
By asking advice – not only in Australia but around the world – it was obvious that the sensible thing to do was to have one skill set operating the air traffic control system in relation to traffic and separation. It was pretty obvious that it would be difficult to licence FSOs to provide a separation service, whereas ATCs were already providing traffic information.
It is plain commonsense to follow the rest of the world and have one skill set (i.e. ATCs) providing all of the separation and traffic information services.
The comment about wanting to deal with one union is completely wrong – it is the exact opposite to what I believed.
Of course it is very easy for someone to anonymously make claims.
In relation to the Sydney Morning Herald article, when have you ever found that journalists get it right? As stated before, there was never an “‘affordable safety’ policy crusade.” Yes, that is how it was interpreted by many journalists as they could not understand that the money spent on safety for aviation was always governed by affordability. They tended to believe it was something new – which of course it wasn’t.
The staff figures are about right. That is, 7,300 down to 3,500, with a constant improvement in safety since then. Can you imagine what would have happened to our industry if the numbers had not been reduced? I can assure you that I would have been able to continue to keep flying, but even more GA businesses would have closed.