The ATsBeaker initiative to publish REPCONs was justified with this preamble..
"....New confidential reporting web page
A new web page featuring de-identified confidential reports on aviation, maritime and rail safety concerns is now available on the ATSB website.
The ATSB’s confidential reporting scheme, REPCON, allows people with safety concerns to report them confidentially to the ATSB without fear of being identified. These confidential reports often contain valuable information that can help industry address unsafe procedures, practices or conditions.
Because many important safety concerns are reported to the ATSB through REPCON, it is vital that all of industry is aware of, and can learn from, the reported concerns. To enhance awareness of these safety issues, the ATSB will make this information available through the publication of de-identified confidential reports on its website.
The published information will include details about safety concerns, as well as responses and safety actions taken by relevant organisations or government agencies about the concern.
It’s important to remember that the information published on the new web page is de-identified to protect the identity of the reporter or any third party individual. REPCON serves to collect information about safety concerns in the aviation, marine and rail industries, to help facilitate safety action and, ultimately, improve transport safety. REPCON is not used to apportion blame or liability—the underpinning legislation specifically precludes information in a report being used for disciplinary purposes. As well, REPCON reports are inadmissible in evidence in a court, except where a person has committed an offence under the Criminal Code (False or misleading information) in making the report..."
Not one to normally question the efficacy (or veracity) of such a statement (I'll leave that to the Ferryman...
) but going through the ICASS list of Annex 13 signatory states (duly provided here by ATsBeaker), I am yet to find any other State that has taken a similar initiative in publishing confidential reports on their websites. Perhaps the Kharon post highlights why this may be so...
"...This pitiful, un detailed, puling little complaint serves to show why the OH&S industry is loosing credibility; everyone is becoming a slightly hysterical, self appointed 'expert'. No wonder there is an element of cynicism when the Repcon system is used as an agenda tool, rather than part of a serious support structure for examining and improving 'real' safety issues. OBR?– "Oh, we don't do them". Silly half assed, subjective complaints from SLF – "Oh yes we do them, have expert opinion for those and everything; no, we never question motive". Spare me and bring back sanity..."
If Beaker is to continue with this, yet another apparently unique Oz initiative, could I suggest they may like to revisit their current REPCON scoping matrix...
Sense & Sensibility??
Moving on but sticking with the theme of the FSB REPCON, I noted the following Paul B (Avweb) article...
Sit the ^%$* Down! ...that provides a serious but somewhat amusing reminder on the dangers of unpredicted CAT...
The good thing is that the vast majority of passengers will never see this kind of turbulence. But the bad thing is not having seen how bad bad can be, they traipse around the cabin unsecured as if on the way from the couch to the refrigerator. Frankly, this makes me nervous as hell. When the flight attendants push the drink trolly up the aisle, that makes me nervous as hell, too. I’ve seen those things come off the deck even in mild bumps. And when I go to the lav, I use one hand for business and the other to maintain a death grip on the helper handle and I jam my head against the ceiling. Then I rush back to my seat and strap in, all the while nervous as hell. I’m not worried about crashing; I’m worried about a broken arm or a concussion.
The following article (also from the US), rather more satirically, reinforces the "K" 'Nanny State' post...
:
Right to Bear Wings
Is confrontation the key to success?
"Aviation" rhymes with "American." Well, even if it's not that close a rhyme, you get the idea. Aviation in many ways represents what it is to live in a free land with free skies. The same, it goes without saying, is or should be true for many of our friends worldwide. Aviation, metaphorically and literally, is a magic activity, one that takes a mere ground-bound mortal and through the power of will, ingenuity and the elegant abuse of raw physics, places us high above the world.
This might sound overly romantic; trust me, I know there's the cost of fuel and insurance, Class A-F airspace, a thousand pages of regs (okay, lots more than that) and that darned FAA medical to contend with, but the basis of it all, the reason we go to all of the other trouble is because flying is special. Apologies to kayakers, cross-stitchers, Sudoku-maniacs and Civil War re-enactors, but there's nothing remotely like flying. Even sky diving gets it wrong. Staying aloft is the point of the whole thing.
My point is simply this: I'm tired of apologizing for flying. I'm tired of telling the "not-in-my-backyard" types that we're very sorry and next time we'll try to climb on thermal energy alone so as to keep the faint and passing noise of GA down while trucks and road crews blare away unabated with hardly any notice taken. I'm tired of apologizing for our use of land, our negligible impact on the environment and our lording it up over the common folk for flying around in our airplanes as we do personal or business travel or just take in the beauty of the day. I'm tired of it.
This is not to say we shouldn't be good neighbors and try to minimize our impact, like any responsible citizen should do, but not because we're begging to stay on people's good side but instead because we choose to do it.
We need to make our message clear. You mess with aviation, you mess with freedom. You try to limit my right to fly, you're messing with not just me but with more than a half a million of my good friends, many of whom feel even more strongly than I do about the issue.
My plane is no threat to you. My plane is an emblem of the freedom to fly, a freedom that generations before us have fought valiantly to protect and one that we take the utmost pride in, for their sake, for ours and for our children.
There might not be a constitutional right directly associated with travel, let alone travel by air — the forefathers were only so prescient — but that right has been interpreted by the Supreme Court of the United States to be so fundamental that its very omission from the Constitution is proof of its unassailably fundamental importance.
And when you travel in a plane, it is, in my non-judicial opinion, even more fundamental and more central our rights as citizens.
Think about it. Our national symbol isn't a trout. It's an eagle. Fly on.
Love it..
{Comment: Hmm...maybe that's our problem we've got Skippy and a flightless bird on our national coat of arms??
}
MTF Sarcs
{ps Does Beaker seriously think that his REPCON examples will remain confidential & de-identified. How hard is it, for the average punter, to work out who the reporter possibly is and who the operator is in some of those published REPCONs...FFS!}