But the party is just about to start??
The pessimistic doomsayers’ 
maybe right and Truss, Tony & Co may have fallen under the spell of the mystique of aviation safety bollocks that Kingcrat, Skull, Beaker, the Don and the Doc hold them under 
. T&T may blithely ignore the house of review and IOS bleating 
that all is not well in the aviation camp but that doesn’t mean we all wander up to the ferry begging for an economy fare to end our misery because it is all too much 
. That would be way too easy and besides the fun and games is just about to start with the 44th parliament soon to sit 
. We’ve already put the majority of the Senate on notice so let’s give them some more ammo to fire at T&T's government. A good place to start is at the proposed upcoming Supp Estimates (18th-22nd November) and I’ve got a couple of questions already that I’d like answers for...
While trolling through the restructured DIRD (formally DoIT..worrying sign as it appears that ‘Transport’ no longer exists ) website I came across the 2012-13 Financial Year Senate Order listing. This document lists all the contracts divvied out by the Department over the last financial year, if you have a bent for figures some of this list makes for some very interesting reading, but there was an entry that particularly piqued my interest....
International Civil Aviation/ International Civil Aviation Organisation Assessment 2013 Australia/ $1,521,278
Start Date 1.01.2013/End Date31.12.2013
....call me old fashioned but 1.5 million is still a considerable sum of money in anyone’s language, especially when it is coming from the public purse. So is this a normal payment made by the dept in lieu of Australia being a signatory to ICAO?
Well if you look at the previous financial year it would seem that could be the case...2012 Calendar year Senate Order. However this is a contract list not a membership fee list and the ICAO contract of 1.5 million for each calendar year (2012&2013) is simply listed as ‘assessment’! Now I’m sure it is all above board and legit but in the interest of transparency Senators could we ask for the details of this contract and what was the outcome of this ICAO assessment??
Note: My bet is the ‘assessment’ could have something to do with the roll out of Annex 19, which is due to be officially applicable on the 14th November...but that is only a guess?? If true though I’d hate to think that we’re just buying (on our coin) a rubber stamp for annex 19...hmm it will be interesting to see what the Doc notifies as differences to the annex??
Ps There are plenty more contracts of interest in the list that deserve a certain amount of scrutiny from the Senators...