The country may slumbering through the stultifying morass of election play making or sitting with a thumb firmly on the mute button; even forgetting the breath taking revelations of the Senate inquiry; but not Ben Sandilands at Plane Talking. I realise that Abbott's dip in the murky waters of the non PC pool may, temporarily, enthral and distract but not even the mods can shut down the press. Tick Tock indeed.
But the candour and speed with which the Philippines authorities notified the public of the actual details is yet another reminder of how poorly Australia’s safety authorities perform, notably in the case of the dishonest and quite frankly disgraceful handling of the Pel-Air crash investigation by both CASA the regulator and the ATSB, the now compromised and un-independent air safety investigator.
Australia, on its record, is more protective of the business interests of shamed airlines than it is accountable to travelling public. In fact the director of air safety at CASA, John McCormick, has quite a bit to say about this on the public and legally privileged record of the Hansard of the recent Senate committee inquiry into the deeply flawed Pel-Air crash report produced by the ATSB. Read the Senate findings and recommendations, and check back with the Hansard. It will take you at least a day, and leave you shaken and appalled.
Your $200 million dollar question is:-
Are we proud of this? Do we care? Or will we only care, when there is an avoidable tragedy in this country, and the responsible minister or his successor, is confronted in an inevitable high level inquiry with a mountain of evidence of shoddy, unresponsive and dangerous incompetency in both CASA and the ATSB?