Regulation Review is up and away
The Aviation Safety Regulation Review announced by Infrastructure Minister Warren Truss on November 14 will open at the end of this week when Chairman David Forsyth is joined on the ASRR panel by Don Spruston from Canada and Roger Whitefield from the United Kingdom. The two visiting panellists are expected to arrive in Australia this weekend.
The minister will announce the launch officially this Friday (January 6), and submissions will be open until the end of January 2014.
The Review Panel is planning to meet in the first week with members of the Senate Standing Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport because of its engagement in a range of aviation issues.
Mr Forsyth says he is looking forward to a busy few months engaging with interested parties from all aviation sectors: “The Panel wants to hear views from across the aviation sector to understand how the system works, what the issues are and how improvements can be made. Your experience is important and your input will be appreciated,” he says.
The program will be supported by print and on-line advertising in a range of aviation press through December and January, and submissions should be made against the Terms of Reference. Submissions can be made through the Aviation Safety Regulation Review webpage from the end of this week.
The Review Panel has already planned a quick round of scoping consultations in the week of 9 December 2013 in Canberra, Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne with airline and general aviation stakeholders. On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday they will meet with Senate committee members including Sen David Fawcett, Bankstown stakeholders and government agencies including CASA and ATSB. The schedule then takes them to Parafield on Thursday, where they will meet South Australian and Western Australian operators, and to Moorabbin on Friday 13.
These are introductory meetings to allow the panel to gauge some of the industry’s views early in the review process. Mr Phillip Reiss, who has been engaged as a specialist adviser on issues affecting the general aviation sector, has assisted in arranging some of the meetings, but invitees have not been limited to AOPA members.
Unfortunately the panel’s Moorabbin meeting was planned before Department organisers were told that the Aviation Maintenance and Repair and Overhaul Business Association (AMROBA) had already scheduled a meeting with Victorian stakeholders at Moorabbin on the same day, chaired by Senator Fawcett, who has a keen and constructive interest in regulatory affairs. However, the panel will almost certainly have separate sessions with AMROBA at some other time, and Mr Forsyth has already spoken with its Executive Director Ken Cannane.
At this stage, the Review Panel is proposing to undertake extensive face-to-face consultation across all States and Territories once the public submission process has closed and the key strategic or systemic issues have been identified. Whilst it won’t be possible to meet with every aviation business and association during the review, Mr Forsyth says the Panel would welcome suggestions as to potential meetings. These suggestions can be made through the public submission process.
Wow, that was quick; and so the Forsyth saga gets on the road. Does this mean that the Murky Machiavellian department of dirty tricks are already out there, muddying the water, changing the road signs, draining petrol tanks and issuing dodgy invitations to the carefully selected chosen few. We shall see.
They are already off to a bad start. If this panel expect to be taken seriously they could begin by using the press as quickly to answer a couple of questions, up front. I'm sure PP would publish the answers.
Mr Phillip Reiss, who has been engaged as a specialist adviser on issues affecting the general aviation sector, etc.
What criteria was used to select Reiss as the "specialist advisor"?
What was the selection process?
Who else was considered for the lucrative little earner?
Who decided that Reiss is the Guru of all things GA?
You see I'm curious to know why a dwindling, insignificant organisation representing perhaps a few hundred private aircraft owners which essentially sells advertising and publishes a few magazines, is "the" organisation to represent GA, not to mention the potential for 'conflict of interest' creeping into the pot at a later date. Risky strategy - you bet.
Then there is this soft soap bollocks about the Melbourne meetings, the panel sitting contemplating their collective navels in one room, AMROBA and Fawcett doing the heavy lifting in the other. If this mob were fair dinkum, they would apologise and toddle along to the Ken and David show, sit at the back and listen. They would learn more there in a morning session that they ever would from "selected" invitees.
Not an auspicious beginning though, is it? Maybe my old wooden head is still reeling from the Senate dribble I forced it to wade through.