Truss: Aviation Safety Regulation Review

[Sarcs]

More of Edwards and a bit of Sandilands..??

Yes the Edwards article is still very relevant, five years may have passed but we as a modern supposedly 1st world aviation safety administrator have not progressedinstead....


So Edwards three fundamental observations stand the test of time so far..:

First, some of the internal problems have not yet been resolved. The 2008 Issues Paper and Green Paper and public submissions indicate that a coordinated and forward-looking air traffic policy is missing; tensions characterise the relationship between CASA and ATSB; and after more than a decade, the conversion of regulations to performance-based format is still incomplete. Was CASA’s skills base eroded too much in the 1990s or is the whole notion of non-prescriptive regulation misconceived anyway?

Second, global air travel is extraordinarily safe. Internationally, safety is not politicised and is not a subject of geo-political wrangling. Governments can achieve extraordinary results if they apply collective minds to an objective that is accepted as being in the public interest of all.

Third, the instability has been fuelled by the lack of a shared understanding of whether the safety regime’s customers are industry, the travelling public or the community. Until the leadership articulates a clear conception of public interest, the staff will never know whose interests they labour to serve.

Meanwhile Ben has published his wishlist/expectations/predictions for 2014 and lo' and behold guess what it is at the top of the list??:

Air safety administration

A Senate committee will ask very detailed questions as to precisely how the Federal Police investigated the earlier concerns of the committee which considered the ATSB Pel-Air crash report, and referred possible breaches of the law by CASA to the AFP. The Federal Police will be asked if certain lines of inquiry were discontinued or disregarded.

My expectation is that a massive whitewash will be attempted, and … it won’t wash. I’m happy to say on a reasonable reading of all of the evidence that the ATSB and CASA probably conspired to suppress incompetence on the part of CASA, that the Transport Safety Investigation Act was offended, and that they set out to frame the pilot of the flight in a manner severely prejudicial to all tests of procedural fairness and failed to produce a report which meets internationally accepted standards of an air accident investigation by a first world country.

I expect that the treatment by various parties of the injuries and personal damage suffered by one of the survivors of that crash will shame all concerned, and that includes in the Opposition as well as Government.

I am concerned that this Government will try suppress disclosures about the ATSB and CASA that reflect very poorly on their current administration on the basis that our country should go to sleep and not be disturbed by such matters.

However I am especially concerned that this will lead to Australia being sanctioned by the US administration on the issue of governance and performance in air safety administration and that it will do to this country what it did to Israel, another very important ally, and bust us down to second tier status, causing the cancellation of the US code shares vital to Qantas and Virgin Australia as well as other negative consequences.

I expect that the Minister has, or will, ask why nothing material has been done change the ludicrously stupid regulations that apply to the refuelling of oceanic flights by Australian run air ambulance services in the more than four years since the Pel-Air crash occurred.

It is not unreasonable to expect the Minister to ask tough questions about CASA’s chronic inability to protect the public from operations it knew to be dangerous in advance such as those involving the late Barry Hempel and Transair, the operator that slaughtered 15 people in the Lockhart River crash of 2005.

I expect the Minister to come under pressure from both sides of the house to bring aviation accident investigations in this country into line with the open hearing practices of ICAC in NSW re the criminality of the previous NSW State Government and the Pink Batts Royal Commission and the various open inquiries into priests fiddling with our children and being protected by churches and organisations acting with evil and loathsome intent to deny justice to the victims and their families.

(The writer has expectations that go way beyond air transport.)

But these are only expectations, and they may not be fulfilled.

Subsequently Ben's IOS 2014 annual membership has been accepted as paid in full...

Addendum:

My 2 bob's worth.. Coroner Chivell's quote.."I gained the very distinct impression that this constituted an ex post facto justification for a conclusion that had already been reached rather than a genuinely dispassionate scientific analysis of the factors involved."...perfectly sums up the standard modus operandi
for both the ATSBeaker & Fort Fumble and should be the IOS catchcry for '14...