Senate Inquiry, Hearing Program 4th Nov 2011

[my oleo is extended]

Let us read “CAsA Chronicle 2001 Ref: Shelfware Mick”.

Another trip down pony pooh lane for your enjoyment. I have posted the link (still works for now) and because of the length of the speech I have cut and pasted only my personal highlights below. Some bits make me laugh, some make me cry,some make me reach for the spew bucket and some things make me wonder if I am in fact Bill Murray.

You may ask what the reason and relevance for my sojourn into CAsA’s bowels, in to the mire of the wormfarm, in to the largest of potted plants is? Well it is to show that CAsA is a bad version of Groundhog Day. A different Minister of the day, different Director, different decade but same old pony pooh, same old tautology and some of the same old faces behind the scenes!

There are heaps of these chronicles out there, but I want the Senators to be aware that the work they have done has been repeated before, over and over and over. This time we want to see actual change.

So sit back with a Crownie, put on some Sonny and Cher and see if you can ‘smell’ a familiar story….

http://www.casa.gov.au/scripts/nc.dll?WCMS:STANDARD:c=PC_91845

CASA's Safety Agenda

Speech by Mick Toller, Director of

Aviation Safety, at SafeSkies 2001, 1 November 2001

CASA's Safety Agenda

One of them is the increased focus that we've got internally and externally in CASA on risk management. I now have an executive risk manager who is responsible for ensuring that everybody in CASA understands and practices risk managements.

I spent 30 years in the private sector. Things that have happened in the private sector haven't necessarily happened within the public sector and need to, and we're going through that process at the moment in CASA.

Corporate governance is the buzz word throughout the private sector but it needs to be the buzz word also within the public sector. Although we don't tend to talk so much about corporate governance, we do need to recognise that the same responsibilities are on those that lead us in the public sector as they are in the private sector and particularly in an authority like CASA which has its Board.

Patrick's road show with Professor James Reason and Bruce Byron has just been completed and that's a very important part of what we do.

We've got the standards that we set and then we've got the
necessary adjunct of ensuring that there's compliance with those standards.

We have a corporate plan. We are required by law to have a
corporate plan, but that corporate plan now is a pretty robust document. It's got a strong strategic focus. It's measurable.

Importantly we are 95% staffed in the compliance section. We are 97% staffed in the standards division,

We're taking a strong focus this year on training and development
We're also recognising the fact that there are a number of other issues that need considerable internal training

We have some systems which we inherited from the old CAA days that are long overdue, I think, for replacing.

It gave us the ability to focus on some small projects which would give us quick wins.

As for ASRIP, now this is a very big program, and it's a very, very important program as far as I'm concerned. It's a management program that ensures we implement the regulations after they're written.

There's also the coordination of knowledge needs across the
organisation, which is partly about making sure that we learn from history and it's partly about ensuring that we enshrine everything that's going on for the future, so that we help those that come after us.

And, finally, it's important to make sure that everything that we do matches up with the concept of the new regulations.

We have just conducted a review of our regulatory reform program which showed basically that although there's a lot of effort going in and a lot of work being done we were predicably, I suppose, short on outcomes.

What we've put together is a program which we believe is going to put that train back on its rails again. The second highest requirement was to remove inconsistencies that existed at the moment. Very near the bottom, interestingly, was to make them more like overseas regulations Although we recognise the fact that it is important that we are in line with the ICAO requirements, in line with international best practice, it's interesting to see that it's not what people regard as a high priority.

What we were dealing with before in regulatory reform was many
stated project objectives. These are the things that we have been told at various times that we had to put into the reform program and they're all quite interesting, they're all important.

They also had to be clear, concise and unambiguous, enforceable, consistent with our international obligations and ICAO and harmonised with the overseas requirements wherever possible.

When you're trying to write new regulations there are many times when you say, well we want it to be like this, but if you make it like this it's not then going to be enforceable or it's not going to be internationally harmonised or it's not going to be based on risk management principles. Weighing up all these different conflicts was causing many of the stresses, I believe, in the reform program going ahead. We've put that to the Attorney-General's Department. Remember that we actually don't write the regulations. Everybody thinks that poor old CASA writes this stuff, but I assure you we don't. It's actually the office of legal drafting in the Attorney-General's Department. We put simplicity to them with some trepidation I have to say, expecting them to turn around to say, you can't do that, but I'm delighted to say that they have actually embraced this concept and welcomed this concept and significantly will help us to achieve it.

Accusation that CASA is sort of judge, jury and executioner.

There was an element of truth in it and I'll be the first to admit it. It is not out of choice. It is what is written in the Civil Aviation Act and this is what Parliament has told us to be.

So this idea that we're out there standing behind a tree waiting to jump out on top of people and prosecute them I'm afraid is a myth.

And the final myth which is going around at the moment is that we were the inventors of strict liability and that we're taking the industry that way. Not so. Strict liability is government policy. Strict liability is about fault and whether fault shows that there is intent or not. In fact it's entirely within the Attorney-'General's Department and CASA has no input to it whatsoever and that's important.

The result of that will be, if it works, greater compliance by industry - which means a safer industry and more contact time for our inspectors. They can get out, they can be doing more flight testing, more checking, and that has also got to be of great value to the future standards of this industry.