Senate estimates and CASA
The Screaming Skull must have had a bad nights sleep when he went before the senate estimates last week ??
Insults and vilification cowardly - Director
John McCormick, Director of Aviation Safety
The Director of Aviation Safety has hit out at people who insult, denigrate and vilify CASA officers.
John McCormick told a Senate estimates committee hearing last week that self-serving and false attacks on CASA and its officers were wrong and unfair.
He said in some cases these types of attacks on CASA’s people were “downright cowardly”.
The Director said there is a big difference between candid and robust criticism which challenges CASA to lift its game and vindictive public disparagement of individual CASA officers by name and station.
“CASA is certainly no stranger to criticism, complaints and variably informed expressions of dissatisfaction with the things we do and the way we do them from the diverse industry we regulate, amongst others,” the Director told the Senate committee.
“I welcome this, as a responsible director of any regulatory authority should welcome balanced, reasonable and constructive advice about where we may have gone wrong, or where we may at least be seen by some to have gone wrong, or where we might do better.
“Well-meaning criticism can be helpful, even if it is wide of the mark, and it gives us a better understanding of the way our actions are perceived and experienced.
“So let me be clear: I have absolutely no interest in discouraging or dissuading our critics from drawing CASA’s actual or assumed shortcomings to my attention, to the government’s attention, or to the attention of the Australian public.
“As I said, I welcome and embrace this.
“At the same time, however, let me be equally clear in highlighting the very significant difference between candid, robust criticism of CASA’s actions as an organisation and what cannot fairly be characterised as other than mean-spirited, tendentiously self-serving and frequently false accusations about, and the vindictive public disparagement of, individual CASA officers by name and by station.
“This is wrong and unfair and, in some cases, I think it is downright cowardly.
“It does nothing to advance the interests of air safety or organisational improvement, and it almost certainly is not intended to do either.
“If left unaddressed, it impugns the reputations and integrity of committed, capable and professional individuals who are dedicated to the critical, and sometimes thankless, regulatory and other safety related tasks, and it takes a serious toll on the morale of the entire staff in ways that, I dare say, some of those who try to conceal what is often nothing more than demagogic vitriol behind the facade of a pointed revelatory critique could not begin to understand.”