The news that CASA has yet another CEO points yet again to the failures that CASA has come to represent, of governance and government. While criticism of CASA is well deserved it is time everbody took a good hard look at the most of the critical probelms and issues which have created this mess which is called aviation regulation in Australia.
Point one. The history of the mess goes back to the Hawke-Keating Labour government and the Minister at the time Mr Jones. The Government created a super Transport Department Canadian style but forgot to implement the low level or bureaucratic reorganisation required to incorporate what had been a separate organisation into the wider federal bureaucratic structure. The pilot strike did nothing to endear Aviation to Federal Labour and the attacks on pilot and engineering unions thereafter merely added further layers of distrust and disinterest. That mistake was followed by the next fad in Government and Federal administration, the re-birthing of government departments and organisations into stand alone business units and user pays, that is changing what had been service organisations into fee charging businesses. In the meantime steps were taken to unshackle Australian aviation from the grasp of protection from market forces and the slow moves to a deregulated aviation industry which then followed. The outcome was the Act of 1988 which still essentially provides the regulatory framework for CASA. That act was seriously flawed and failed to remove the vestiges of bureaucratic colonialism, namely regulatory intervention in the work of the market and industry. The failure to provide a proper Act to govern aviation and to ensure that any regulatory body did not return to intervening in the market for aviation products and services has been pointed out in several Commissions of Inquiry into serious accidents that occured in the intervening years (Seaview etc.). So point one the Act is flawed and remained flawed.
Point two. Nobody has understood or been able to introduce into the CAA and then subsequently CASA the notion of customer service as would befit and be mandatory in any business that ostensibly is to service paying customers nor has it been possible to reconcile safety regulation with a profit making organisation, because you cannot. They are different processes and have different outcomes. Why because regulation serves the needs of the wider public interest and international obligations and profit making serves the need of shareholders and investors or market forces. All subsequent Governments and adminstrators of CASA have sought to maintain the fiction that you can do what is impossible. There is no doubt that any regulator can and should strive to be both accountable and provide a service that is customer focused but that is very different to attempting to reconcile making a profit and making things safe.
Point three. No previous Government or the High Courts has provided a definition of safety as a result, the very thing that should and must be agreed upon has remained a vague and nebulous concept. Accordingly how safety in aviation is interpreted has varied and moved continuously in a manner that has defied the logic and capacity of industry and or Canberra bureaucrats to manage or provide. The key problem is that when in doubt politicians have deferred to the regulator and despite their claims to consult with industry or the public never really have in a way that produced a meaningful and workable outcome.
Point four. As a result of the operation of aviation businesses in Australia big and small to achieve and maintain a high safety standard which meant they stayed in business and kept their customers, governments and the bureaucracy have been content not to change anything, after all they have a perception that it works, it does but not for the reasons they think.
Point five. Australian aviation has suffered from the indifference and neglect of a series of really stupid and ignorant Ministers who have been content to allow the Canberra mandarins dictate and deal with the issues described in points 1-4. They never have developed a coherent policy that understood the need for root and branch reform required and hence to scrap the Act, develop a new one and append to that Act the regulatory framework required and plainly obviously available via the ICAO and FAA frameworks.
Point six. A large number of people involved in the industry and at the regulator and the wider public have failed to understand the serious challenges and changes that have manifested themselves over the past several decades to aviation as an industry both manufacturing and of transportation. In short, the industry is in what economists would describe as a mature or tertiary stage, where entry barriers are formidable because of the technology and capital costs of participation and where large segments were in decline because of the wider changes brought about by globalisation and changing societal needs. The transport side has matured and is now dominated by effectively two mega manufacturers world wide and the recreational or private capacity has diminished with the lack of innovation and the loss of participants, simple. Those changes and outcomes were evident in the 1980's and have become more evident over the intervening period. Living in the past has meant many have failed to look at what the future may hold or where the industry may be going.
Point seven. For all the above reasons, CASA became an organisation dominated by a mindset of know all about everything aviation and ignorant of the need for change. Trapped in its own history and internal mythology it has like all organisations recruited people who were very good at group think but very poor at thinking (with exceptions but there always are). Like all organisation it becomes over time an organisation interested primarily in its own needs and self survival and fails to service or do what it was chartered to do, regulate aviation safely, instead it has just regulated.
Point eight. The splitting up of the accident investigation capacity and the oversight and control of air traffic services left the regulator with no capacity to effectively influence or control critical aspects of aviation, safety failure and airspace management. The internecine warfare that characterises Canberra bureaucratic process and power processes meant that CASA was left without friends at Court and dependent on the largess of treasury and its finances dependent upon a regulatory imposition from the industry, the fuel excise instead of being given funds direct from treasury budget allocations like all other departments.
Point nine. The governance structure of CASA has failed because it ostensibly is a quasi government body and hence it had a Board of Directors imposed upon it but it is a Board that has proved to be all but useless and has been used to pander to political largess and has been nothing but a gravy train to political insiders, no matter if they were from the industry or not. For what is in effect a small Government Department it has meant that the Board has not been a policy and business oversight body interested in the industry it participates whose management and oversight would be keenly felt were the body a true profit making organisation but instead is nothing but a club, rubber stamping either the wishes of the only shareholder, the Government (Minister) or the behaviour and activity of the Chief Executive Officer.
Point ten. Successive Governments have accquiesed for reasons of political ineptitude and or ignorance to the need for a radical and complete overhaul of aviation legislation and regulations without the need for intervention in either the market or technological development (innovation and manufacturing). Minister after Minister has failed to grasp the serious implications of allowing a regulatory body to draft its own regulations and at the same time has been incapable of properly listening to the concerns and issues of the relevant external industry participants, be they owners or operators. The outcome is the disgraceful waste of public monies, the squandering of precious time to an industry already facing significant challenges on a variety of fronts and what frankly is now nothing but an unworkable and convoluted regulatory froth that bares little resemblance to good governance or simple plain rules that would protect the wider public interest or help maintain a viable and profitable industry.
So it will matter not who is appointed CEO, they will achieve nothing of any lasting use and the industry will decline terminally until the Government or A government addresses the above points.