Oleo's top post
said:
- When that inquiry was taking place and Mr Hood was taking QON's about fatigue at JQ and safety risks, the JQ Safety Manager had only been working for Mr Hood as a Safety Systems Specialist (SSS) about 12 months earlier at CASA, all part of the same team, very close, all good mates.
- Gets better. Another one of their 'group', also a SSS, resigned around the same time. He ends up coming back to CASA as a 'consultant' (in Mr Hoods group where he worked 12 months earlier) and he participates in a CASA audit of none other than JQ! Yes he gets to audit his former fellow CASA mate who is now at JQ in a senior role!
All of this took place within an approximately 12 month period!
Hmm kind of gives a lot of credence to Aherne’s supp submission that deals with ‘prejudice and outcome bias’, see here:
1. Introduction.
I thank the committee for allowing me to make a supplementary submission to the Inquiry. The Inquiry has to this point necessarily had to consider technical matters contained in the many submissions it has received. This submission however, will focus on the issues of prejudice and outcome bias which along with allegations of collusion have tainted the ATSB investigation. On a separate matter, I have attached an Appendix which criticques the more confounding of the answers provided by the ATSB in response to questions on notice.
Link to that submission:https://senate.aph.gov.au/submission...6-7c95160557d9
It was also obvious Oleo that the Senators at that inquiry were being fed information along the lines of which you suggest.
They asked several questions in regards to FF ‘conflict of interest’, here’s an example:
5. HANSARD, RA&T 7273
Senator O’BRIEN—There are plenty of examples of contractual requirements that limit movement benefiting from an employment arrangement with one company to another company—taking advantage of the knowledge given by one company and then using it for another. Is there no means for CASA to introduce some sort of system which would penalise the taking of such an advantage? I guess you cannot prevent it because you cannot stop someone from leaving when they resign, but is there no way that contractually you can limit where they can go?
Mr McCormick—Generally speaking, we have discussed this internally, particularly after the last rather high‐profile departure we had. My understanding is concomitant with government policy—that we do not have very many tools available to us. Dr Aleck may wish to add a couple of points on this because it is a topical issue.
Dr Aleck—We have been very closely reviewing these things for the very reasons you have raised. Such a provision in a contract is possible. It is legal. Obviously, it can only prospective; we cannot insert it into an existing contract. The information—which I think the Attorney General’s Department has published, but I will take that on notice to confirm it—is that those provisions are notoriously difficult to enforce. Whilst they are legally available, as a practical matter there is great difficulty in enforcing them.
But then that line of inquiry unfortunately got lost in the Tiger AOC suspension and as we know the rest is history.
Coming back to the Pel-Air situation, we should not forget that they too had a mover and shaker adept at greasing the wheels of government process and a former Minister for Transport to boot!
Perhaps another thread (down the track) could look into what would appear to be some perfect examples of ‘conflict of interest’ within a government agency,….hmm definitely ‘food for thought’?
But for now let’s step back on Lefty’s TWM…
PAIN’s extracted piece from the Pel-Air SAR is indeed fascinating. I can’t believe that what the report revealed as some pretty ordinary systemic deficiencies within the maintenance org and the defect reporting regime only amounted to one ASR and one RCA…WTF?
So doing some trolling (as you do) on google I came across a rather relevant headline from the SMH, August 20 1986….“Pilots pressed not to log plane defects, Pel-Air inquest told”. The Sydney Morning Herald - Google News Archive Search
Now given the findings as stated in the ‘Maintenance Control and Defect Reporting’ section of the Pel-Air SAR and if history had been a little different and (God forbid!) everyone had perished on VH-NGA would this headline have looked so out of place during the Coronial Inquest that would have inevitably been called? Or indeed, if history wasn’t changed but instead we swapped the word “inquest” for “inquiry” would this be a relevant headline today?
Oh well off doing a Kelpie!