Who represents GA to government in Australia?

[LeadSled]

Folks,
What dose a Guilder do?? Looks like we have one who guilds the Lilly ??

Guilders, old maaaaaate!!!, you are so far from reality I am wondering if you should be let out without an escort.

Seriously, the only sadly brief time when AOPA was an effective advocate for GA was a brief period, when Dick Smith and Boyd Munro gave the place a good spring clean, and part of the prime policy was:

"Pay your own way, have your own say" in recognition of the axiom:"He who pays the piper calls the tune".

In the period from about 1995 through to the end of Bill Pike's term as President, quite a lot was achieved, and CASA knew that AOPA had the lobbying power, in that period, to get up dis-allowance motions in the Senate, as was demonstrated on a number of occasions. In this period, AOPA lobbying resulted in changes to the Act and Regulations that materially benefited all of aviation.

One was the removal of regulation that mandated fixed ELT, saving GA around $20M in '95 dollars for devices with a worse than 95% failure rate in real world accidents.

Another was a change to the Act, eliminating the provision that a pilot could be prosecuted for being negligent to him or herself -- a nonsense legal proposition --- which, incidentally, CASA is trying to revive.

Parts 21 to 35 would not have ever made it into law without the combined efforts of several thousand AOPA members all collectively lobbying.

In other words, without AOPA there would be no Experimental Amateur Built --- just one of the many things brought in with Part 21 (and SAAA did nothing to help push the legislation through against concerted opposition from elements of CASA)

There would have been no vast expansion of RAOz.

I could go on, but where has there been any significant AOPA "wins" --- real wins for GA -- since it ceased to be an activist organisation, and got into bed with CASA???


Tootle pip!!