Senator FAWCETT: Are you aware of the case of the Commonwealth versus Denison, in the late 1980s?
Mr McCormick : No, not personally.
Senator FAWCETT: It is a trial case that was put up to determine whether pilots with a colour vision deficiency should be able to operate in night operations, RPT operations and commercial operations, and it was found that they could. In fact a whole new test was devised—the tower-gun test—to clear that, and we now have pilots who have been flying for a number of years and thousands of hours in RPT aircraft, single-pilot operations with multifunction displays, very safely. To my understanding there have been no incidents. Can you confirm whether or not it is correct that CASA is looking to review that, on the application of one of the pilots who seeks to become a captain, exercising the rights of his ATPL, on the basis of the safe flying record, and that CASA is looking to challenge that and obstruct it in the AAT?
Mr McCormick : My understanding is that following on from an AAT decision about colour deficiencies—it may very well be the case you are referring to, but I am not sure—CASA now allows pilots with colour deficiency to fly, up to commercial pilot licence standard. To my knowledge we are the only major regulator in the world that allows this.
The FAA does not allow it, neither does Canada and the ICAO standards do not allow it. I believe the matter before the AAT—and I will refer to my general counsel if necessary—involves the pilot applying now to go not only from commercial but he wants an Airline Transport Pilots Licence. We are already out ahead of the world on this. The actual matter is before the AAT, hence I would prefer not to comment on it until we get a result. But as I said we are very liberal with this already, compared with ICAO and the rest of the world.
Senator FAWCETT: I recognise that, and if you look at Australian aviation history, with things like DME and T-VASI we have led the world on a number of occasions and the rest of the world now thanks us for that. My concern is that there is considerable talk and concern within the industry that CASA is not only seeking to prevent this person from exercising the privileges of an ATPL but is in fact seeking to wind back the decision to pre-1989—pre the Denison case—to realign itself with the FAA and other people. I am just trying to understand whether there is in fact that intent, but, also, if the evidence base is very clear both in the Denison case and in the thousands of hours of flying since, that pilots can operate safely, then what is the safety case for not actually allowing someone to exercise the privileges of an ATPL?
Mr McCormick : As to the exact nature of the AAT proceedings, I would prefer not to talk about it. We will take on notice your question about whether we are attempting to withdraw anything. The issue around medical standards is that quite a lot of these medical standards are not set by CASA. In fact we do not set any medical standards. We use whatever the expertise in that particular area says is the requirement, unless we have good reasons to do otherwise. The fact that we have had many years without accidents or incidents—and I will assume for moment we have not, but I will take that on notice—I think we are in a situation where, to go even further, we would need more than a safety case. We would most probably need medical science to tell us that that is probably not too far. As I said, we are already out in front of the world on this. So, we are not actively trying to stop anybody doing anything, but we do have to exercise some degree of caution.