Mr Skidmore resigned
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Chester comes out as another creep with no love for aviation.
ABC news tonight also...
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Might be a bit harsh to judge Mr Carmody three weeks prior to him taking up the role?
He is not a heavy jet pilot - check
He is not a heavy jet sumpy - check
He is not an ex traffic controller - check
He is not ex ADF - check
He is, therefore, not beholden to any particulr segment of the industry. We tried that before, and suffered again and again.
He needs to surround himself with a variety of well experienced, demonstrably succesful and articulate industry participants. This is currently CASAs achilles heel, and has been for too long.
He is not a heavy jet pilot - check
He is not a heavy jet sumpy - check
He is not an ex traffic controller - check
He is not ex ADF - check
He is, therefore, not beholden to any particulr segment of the industry. We tried that before, and suffered again and again.
He needs to surround himself with a variety of well experienced, demonstrably succesful and articulate industry participants. This is currently CASAs achilles heel, and has been for too long.
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Australian Flying take on the matter.
And so the minister has sent in his own man.
The appointment this week of Shane Carmody as Acting CEO and Director of Aviation Safety raises more questions than it provides answers. Carmody was Deputy Secretary of the Department of Infrastructure and Transport, and as a former CASA Deputy Director he went to that job with a solid aviation background. The move was applauded in the aviation community; he was seen as a white-hat that shouldn't have been passed over for DAS when John McCormick landed the role. Now, Shane Carmody gets his chance to drink from a chalice that has becoming increasingly poisoned. CASA DAS has become responsible for a string of broken hearts, and no-one in the position in the past 20 years been able to stamp authority on the place and rein in the rampant bureacracy that has infected the regulator. Suddenly, Minister Darren Chester expects Shane Carmody to do the job by the end of the year. Honestly, if Carmody has the goods to do that, then just leave him there. If he can't do that, then Mr Chester has a problem larger than he ever knew, as it may come to pass that no one person can clean up CASA to the point that it has any earned authority over those it regulates. Within weeks of Carmody striding in through the automatic doors at Aviation House, I have no doubt that he'll be reporting back to Chester that he does indeed have a problem larger than anyone at the department ever thought. Having said that, Carmody has been there before; he has first-hand frustration with the empire building, megalomania and job-protection rackets that continue to undermine reform attempts. He could have written such a report a month ago! Maybe he did ... maybe that's why the minister has sent his own man in now; because no-one else is capable of being the walk-up start needed to drive reform.
Read more at The Last Minute Hitch: 2 September 2016 - Australian Flying
The Last Minute Hitch: 2 September 2016 - Australian Flying
The appointment this week of Shane Carmody as Acting CEO and Director of Aviation Safety raises more questions than it provides answers. Carmody was Deputy Secretary of the Department of Infrastructure and Transport, and as a former CASA Deputy Director he went to that job with a solid aviation background. The move was applauded in the aviation community; he was seen as a white-hat that shouldn't have been passed over for DAS when John McCormick landed the role. Now, Shane Carmody gets his chance to drink from a chalice that has becoming increasingly poisoned. CASA DAS has become responsible for a string of broken hearts, and no-one in the position in the past 20 years been able to stamp authority on the place and rein in the rampant bureacracy that has infected the regulator. Suddenly, Minister Darren Chester expects Shane Carmody to do the job by the end of the year. Honestly, if Carmody has the goods to do that, then just leave him there. If he can't do that, then Mr Chester has a problem larger than he ever knew, as it may come to pass that no one person can clean up CASA to the point that it has any earned authority over those it regulates. Within weeks of Carmody striding in through the automatic doors at Aviation House, I have no doubt that he'll be reporting back to Chester that he does indeed have a problem larger than anyone at the department ever thought. Having said that, Carmody has been there before; he has first-hand frustration with the empire building, megalomania and job-protection rackets that continue to undermine reform attempts. He could have written such a report a month ago! Maybe he did ... maybe that's why the minister has sent his own man in now; because no-one else is capable of being the walk-up start needed to drive reform.
Read more at The Last Minute Hitch: 2 September 2016 - Australian Flying
The Last Minute Hitch: 2 September 2016 - Australian Flying
I wonder what this will mean for the introduction of Operator formulated flight and duty limits?
Perhaps the former DAS was a little too "firm" when it came to cultural reform as part of the FRMS process!
Perhaps the former DAS was a little too "firm" when it came to cultural reform as part of the FRMS process!
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Any new paradigm is without merit unless it addresses the basic question of trust. So many have been granted license to meld into a position that demands instantaneous action but have wasted the time to be factored into the system by the public servants. The poor suffering aviation industry /fraternity have simply been there and done that. I'll watch this space, but don't expect anything . The industry is buggered. full stop. What is anybody going to do about that that doesn't involve mind numbing reviews, inquiries, political inputs or bureaucratic obfuscation?
Nobody trusts the regulator. Get it?
Nobody trusts the regulator. Get it?
from recent experience: there is money to be made in aviation.
however profitability depends on the good offices of a regulator that has allegedly. demonstrated that it cannot be trusted.
for example, why isn't there a seaplane service providing charter/'rpt" from the Gold Coast to the Sunshine Coast and beyond?
however profitability depends on the good offices of a regulator that has allegedly. demonstrated that it cannot be trusted.
for example, why isn't there a seaplane service providing charter/'rpt" from the Gold Coast to the Sunshine Coast and beyond?
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for example, why isn't there a seaplane service providing charter/'rpt" from the Gold Coast to the Sunshine Coast and beyond?
I wait with great interest for Mr Carmody's forecast of when he will complete the regulatory reform process and publish the final CAR's!! It has only taken 28 years so far.
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I wait with great interest for Mr Carmody's forecast of when he will complete the regulatory reform process and publish the final CAR's!! It has only taken 28 years so far.
...not to mention the hundreds of MILLIONS of dollars it's cost as well.
Unfortunately tail wheel, I can't see it ever being finished. Not in my lifetime anyway. There are too many people involved where it is in their best interests to keep it going for as long as possible.
I wish Mr Carmody well, but I can't see how he's going to do any better than his predecessors, given the mess he's inheriting. I hope I'm proven wrong, for the sake of the industry.
...not to mention the hundreds of MILLIONS of dollars it's cost as well.
Unfortunately tail wheel, I can't see it ever being finished. Not in my lifetime anyway. There are too many people involved where it is in their best interests to keep it going for as long as possible.
I wish Mr Carmody well, but I can't see how he's going to do any better than his predecessors, given the mess he's inheriting. I hope I'm proven wrong, for the sake of the industry.
You're forgetting that at the moment he is only in an interim position so he is unlikely and unable to do anything of consequence. If he is made the permanent DAS then he can effect change, or keep the status quo while maintaining the illusion of progress
agree with look left, it does not matter who the DAS is. without a mandate for change from the government, only cosmetic changes can or will be made because reform, by definition, changes the risk profile of aviation to the government.
to put that another way, CASA provides fireproof insulation for the Government against any aviation tragedy. fiddle with CASA and if there is an accident within the lifetime of the next Parliament, then the Government, not CASA, wears it.
to put that another way, CASA provides fireproof insulation for the Government against any aviation tragedy. fiddle with CASA and if there is an accident within the lifetime of the next Parliament, then the Government, not CASA, wears it.
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If this "clusterfkuc" is by design, it confirms what the public already assume of politicians and their greedy tenacious grip on power. No amount of foreign donation will save them or their onerous servants from scrutiny one day. I eagerly await that day of reckoning.
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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.
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.
Hear! Hear!
In order to fix a problem, you have to understand and deal with the causes of the problem.
CASA is not the cause of most of the problems in aviation regulation. CASA is a symptom, as are the ATSB and Airservices.
The aviation regulatory reform program and the plight of GA are just manifestations - albeit very stark ones - of the degradation and decay in the fabric of government generally.
The degradation and decay in the fabric of government is caused mainly by the major political party duopoly. The major political parties now comprise mainly career politicians, whose staff members are mainly aspiring career politicians, whose main aim is to obtain and retain the government benches. But having done so, they don't have much of a clue what to do next.
Not "say" next, but "do" next.
Here's how governments now run, and why the chronic mess that is the aviation regulatory reform program, which is one of many chronic messes, will never be cleaned up while ever the major party duopoly prevails, no matter who happens to be the talking head at the top of CASA.
The day-to-day activities of government are managed by Ministerial staffers. (There are exceptions: The Abbott government was run by one staffer, singular - Ms Peta Credlin. The Rudd government was run by Mr Kevin Rudd. Alone.)
The Ministerial staffer's job is to protect and promote the interests of their Minister. Whether those interests happen to be consistent with the public interest, or even those of the Minister's colleagues, is generally of secondary relevance.
Ministerial staffers are not public servants. And neither 'side' of politics will call the other side's staffers to account in front of parliamentary committees, because that would be MAD: Mutually Assured Destruction. You question ours? We'll question yours. And we both know that we have very, very dirty laundry that none of us has any interest in being aired in public.
This has created a symbiosis between the major parties. While ever they continue to take turns in government, they'll continue to control and nurture the system that gives them and their friends a continuous and very lucrative share of the body politic's treasure. Although each of them would prefer the other to be in opposition, it is in neither of their interests to put the cosy duopoly at risk.
(If you want to get a warm inner glow from seeing the major parties reaching out to each other in the spirit of bi-partisanship, watch how quickly amendments to parliamentary entitlements legislation whoosh through the Parliament if the amendments result in an increase in entitlements. Daily allowance of $275 to stay in a unit in Canberra owned and negatively geared by your wife? Sure! Here you go. There will never be real reform to the political donations rules, while ever the duopoly prevails. All in the public interest, of course.)
To protect and promote the Minister's interests, the staffer needs good news stories and no bad news stories, or at least none for which the Minister will be blamed. That's where the people who run the government agencies come in. Their job is to supply the good news stories and make sure the Minister is never embarrassed. (This is why Ben Morgan was black-banned by Minister Chester's staffer.) The people who survive and thrive in the government agencies are very good at making themselves useful in this regard. Anyone who's been around aviation for a while would be able to name a couple of these people.
(The debacle that is the Census is just one more manifestation of the facade that much of government is. All of the smooth rhetoric about how it would all be fine, then reality hits, followed by more smooth rhetoric. I heard an ABS representative asked, the day after Census night, whether he "guaranteed" that the information that been successfully submitted would be secure. He said "yes". That man is either a fool or a charlatan. You don't have to think hard to guess which is more likely. Meanwhile, the NDIS Portal is an abject failure. And, naturally, the 'responsible' Ministers have no responsibility. Meanwhile, everything's fine at all those privatised airports. A Ministerial spokesperson said so.)
And the more power the agencies are given, the easier it is to do this job. Whether doing that job happens to be consistent with the public interest is generally of secondary relevance.
This has created a symbiosis between the major parties and the people who run the government agencies. While ever the agencies bring good news for the Minister and no bad news for which the Minister is blamed or embarrassed, the government agencies are doing their job and will be protected by the Minister. Accordingly, for instance, when there's a change in government, the new Minister will defend his or her agency against accusations about which he or she was criticising the agency from opposition. It's just a Punch and Judy show where the party that plays Punch and the party that plays Judy happen to swap roles occasionally. (A current example of this is the NBN.)
It is true that most ordinary parliamentarians are very hard working, have the best of intentions and want to make the world a better place. (Ditto CASA.) But the major parties are a machine, and the machine runs the parliamentarians. The machine is designed and fine-tuned for one purpose only: To attain and retain the government benches.
The machine even drives the PM. That's why a PM who supports marriage equality is nonetheless putting the country through an expensive delaying tactic to avoid implementing marriage equality. Having scraped into power, Mr T now has to placate some powerful people in his own 'team' by pretending the plebiscite is a good idea and that the shambles he is nominally in charge of is united.
That's why David Fawcett is not the Minister for aviation. Cabinet and Ministerial structures and positions are now determined by favours owed and the wielding of factional power, not competence and expertise in the subject matter of a portfolio. And even if David Fawcett were to be made Minister for aviation, the machine of which he is a part would determine what he did and did not do about aviation.
Likewise, CASA and Airservices and ATSB and the portfolio department responsible for them are fine-tuned to the purpose of insulating the Minister from responsibility for anything to do with aviation. Most of the drones in the machine have the best of intentions and want to make the world a better place, but the machine isn't designed for that. And the machine is falling apart.
Aviation regulation, ATC, running airports as airports and aviation accident investigation are irrelevant to achieving the major parties' primary purpose. That's why, for example, all of the major party Senators who've identified appalling messes in the ATSB, Airservices and CASA during Committee inquiries have never put their vote where their mouth is. Not once. That's why Mr Dolan kept his job despite the sick expensive joke that the NGA 'investigation', and his defence of it, were. Mr Dolan was, in the context of how governments actually run, doing his job very, very well.
Lucky that most aviation activity can (and does) occur at reasonable and acceptable levels of safety without the 'help' of CASA, without any 'management' in Airservices Australia, without the 'benefit' of whatever it is that the ATSB does these days, and despite the 'responsible' portfolio department being MIA. These days, most people involved in the aviation industry are merely crying out for the government to just stop creating more and more complexity and mess and cost for no tangible safety or commercial benefit.
There used to be a time when, having attained government, the government had a thing called a "plan" and the government then went about "implementing" that "plan". That "plan" used to be formulated by people who knew the detail of what actually had to be done to have a chance of actually "implementing" the plan. These days, governments have "slogans" and surround themselves with people who are willing to do whatever it takes to create the facade that the slogans are being or have been implemented.
The outcome now is that the people who actually run the country - Ministerial staffers - are not publicly accountable, and if the activities of government agencies are in the public interest, it's usually through mere coincidence.
There is an Orwellian fiction utilised to justify this: The Minister's interests and the public interest are - it is argued - the same, because the government of which the Minister is a part was elected by the public. The fact that usually more than half of the population didn't vote for the incumbent government is neither here nor there, apparently.
This is why it can be so very, very confusing for outsiders who try to reason with governments using objective evidence and appeals to the public interest and what is 'right'. The brutal political reality is that trying to reason with governments and their agencies in this way is like telling the pilot in command of an aircraft the railway gauge in Ethiopia. It's an interesting but completely irrelevant piece of information in the context of the task being performed.
(The increasing number of votes for minor parties and independents, the most popular of whom is called "informal", shows that members of the public are ever-so-slowly realising what's going on.)
Unfortunately, nothing about the aviation regulatory reform program and the plight of GA is of relevance to the tasks being performed by governments and their agencies, in the sense that I have outlined above. There's too much political risk and too little potential political reward for a Minister to intervene to do anything. The symbiotic relationship would be terminated and the Minister would be exposed and responsible. Easier to just find another Skidmore, McCormick, Byron or Toller to draw the flack for another few years, in return for some pieces of silver.
So, when in Canberra, you have to do it the Canberra way. Unless you can buy one of the major parties, you're pretty much limited to lobbying the cross-bench Senators, because some of them take the quaint view that they are there to protect and promote the interests of their constituents, and some of them actually mean it.
If the cross-bench and opposition Senators are in the way of something a government wants badly enough, the government will give the cross-bench Senators just about anything they want. Note that in these circumstances the merits or otherwise of what the cross-bench Senators want will be of secondary relevance to the government's decision to give them what they want. The decision will be made primarily on the basis of how badly the government wants to get the blocked measure through.
In order to fix a problem, you have to understand and deal with the causes of the problem.
CASA is not the cause of most of the problems in aviation regulation. CASA is a symptom, as are the ATSB and Airservices.
The aviation regulatory reform program and the plight of GA are just manifestations - albeit very stark ones - of the degradation and decay in the fabric of government generally.
The degradation and decay in the fabric of government is caused mainly by the major political party duopoly. The major political parties now comprise mainly career politicians, whose staff members are mainly aspiring career politicians, whose main aim is to obtain and retain the government benches. But having done so, they don't have much of a clue what to do next.
Not "say" next, but "do" next.
Here's how governments now run, and why the chronic mess that is the aviation regulatory reform program, which is one of many chronic messes, will never be cleaned up while ever the major party duopoly prevails, no matter who happens to be the talking head at the top of CASA.
The day-to-day activities of government are managed by Ministerial staffers. (There are exceptions: The Abbott government was run by one staffer, singular - Ms Peta Credlin. The Rudd government was run by Mr Kevin Rudd. Alone.)
The Ministerial staffer's job is to protect and promote the interests of their Minister. Whether those interests happen to be consistent with the public interest, or even those of the Minister's colleagues, is generally of secondary relevance.
Ministerial staffers are not public servants. And neither 'side' of politics will call the other side's staffers to account in front of parliamentary committees, because that would be MAD: Mutually Assured Destruction. You question ours? We'll question yours. And we both know that we have very, very dirty laundry that none of us has any interest in being aired in public.
This has created a symbiosis between the major parties. While ever they continue to take turns in government, they'll continue to control and nurture the system that gives them and their friends a continuous and very lucrative share of the body politic's treasure. Although each of them would prefer the other to be in opposition, it is in neither of their interests to put the cosy duopoly at risk.
(If you want to get a warm inner glow from seeing the major parties reaching out to each other in the spirit of bi-partisanship, watch how quickly amendments to parliamentary entitlements legislation whoosh through the Parliament if the amendments result in an increase in entitlements. Daily allowance of $275 to stay in a unit in Canberra owned and negatively geared by your wife? Sure! Here you go. There will never be real reform to the political donations rules, while ever the duopoly prevails. All in the public interest, of course.)
To protect and promote the Minister's interests, the staffer needs good news stories and no bad news stories, or at least none for which the Minister will be blamed. That's where the people who run the government agencies come in. Their job is to supply the good news stories and make sure the Minister is never embarrassed. (This is why Ben Morgan was black-banned by Minister Chester's staffer.) The people who survive and thrive in the government agencies are very good at making themselves useful in this regard. Anyone who's been around aviation for a while would be able to name a couple of these people.
(The debacle that is the Census is just one more manifestation of the facade that much of government is. All of the smooth rhetoric about how it would all be fine, then reality hits, followed by more smooth rhetoric. I heard an ABS representative asked, the day after Census night, whether he "guaranteed" that the information that been successfully submitted would be secure. He said "yes". That man is either a fool or a charlatan. You don't have to think hard to guess which is more likely. Meanwhile, the NDIS Portal is an abject failure. And, naturally, the 'responsible' Ministers have no responsibility. Meanwhile, everything's fine at all those privatised airports. A Ministerial spokesperson said so.)
And the more power the agencies are given, the easier it is to do this job. Whether doing that job happens to be consistent with the public interest is generally of secondary relevance.
This has created a symbiosis between the major parties and the people who run the government agencies. While ever the agencies bring good news for the Minister and no bad news for which the Minister is blamed or embarrassed, the government agencies are doing their job and will be protected by the Minister. Accordingly, for instance, when there's a change in government, the new Minister will defend his or her agency against accusations about which he or she was criticising the agency from opposition. It's just a Punch and Judy show where the party that plays Punch and the party that plays Judy happen to swap roles occasionally. (A current example of this is the NBN.)
It is true that most ordinary parliamentarians are very hard working, have the best of intentions and want to make the world a better place. (Ditto CASA.) But the major parties are a machine, and the machine runs the parliamentarians. The machine is designed and fine-tuned for one purpose only: To attain and retain the government benches.
The machine even drives the PM. That's why a PM who supports marriage equality is nonetheless putting the country through an expensive delaying tactic to avoid implementing marriage equality. Having scraped into power, Mr T now has to placate some powerful people in his own 'team' by pretending the plebiscite is a good idea and that the shambles he is nominally in charge of is united.
That's why David Fawcett is not the Minister for aviation. Cabinet and Ministerial structures and positions are now determined by favours owed and the wielding of factional power, not competence and expertise in the subject matter of a portfolio. And even if David Fawcett were to be made Minister for aviation, the machine of which he is a part would determine what he did and did not do about aviation.
Likewise, CASA and Airservices and ATSB and the portfolio department responsible for them are fine-tuned to the purpose of insulating the Minister from responsibility for anything to do with aviation. Most of the drones in the machine have the best of intentions and want to make the world a better place, but the machine isn't designed for that. And the machine is falling apart.
Aviation regulation, ATC, running airports as airports and aviation accident investigation are irrelevant to achieving the major parties' primary purpose. That's why, for example, all of the major party Senators who've identified appalling messes in the ATSB, Airservices and CASA during Committee inquiries have never put their vote where their mouth is. Not once. That's why Mr Dolan kept his job despite the sick expensive joke that the NGA 'investigation', and his defence of it, were. Mr Dolan was, in the context of how governments actually run, doing his job very, very well.
Lucky that most aviation activity can (and does) occur at reasonable and acceptable levels of safety without the 'help' of CASA, without any 'management' in Airservices Australia, without the 'benefit' of whatever it is that the ATSB does these days, and despite the 'responsible' portfolio department being MIA. These days, most people involved in the aviation industry are merely crying out for the government to just stop creating more and more complexity and mess and cost for no tangible safety or commercial benefit.
There used to be a time when, having attained government, the government had a thing called a "plan" and the government then went about "implementing" that "plan". That "plan" used to be formulated by people who knew the detail of what actually had to be done to have a chance of actually "implementing" the plan. These days, governments have "slogans" and surround themselves with people who are willing to do whatever it takes to create the facade that the slogans are being or have been implemented.
The outcome now is that the people who actually run the country - Ministerial staffers - are not publicly accountable, and if the activities of government agencies are in the public interest, it's usually through mere coincidence.
There is an Orwellian fiction utilised to justify this: The Minister's interests and the public interest are - it is argued - the same, because the government of which the Minister is a part was elected by the public. The fact that usually more than half of the population didn't vote for the incumbent government is neither here nor there, apparently.
This is why it can be so very, very confusing for outsiders who try to reason with governments using objective evidence and appeals to the public interest and what is 'right'. The brutal political reality is that trying to reason with governments and their agencies in this way is like telling the pilot in command of an aircraft the railway gauge in Ethiopia. It's an interesting but completely irrelevant piece of information in the context of the task being performed.
(The increasing number of votes for minor parties and independents, the most popular of whom is called "informal", shows that members of the public are ever-so-slowly realising what's going on.)
Unfortunately, nothing about the aviation regulatory reform program and the plight of GA is of relevance to the tasks being performed by governments and their agencies, in the sense that I have outlined above. There's too much political risk and too little potential political reward for a Minister to intervene to do anything. The symbiotic relationship would be terminated and the Minister would be exposed and responsible. Easier to just find another Skidmore, McCormick, Byron or Toller to draw the flack for another few years, in return for some pieces of silver.
So, when in Canberra, you have to do it the Canberra way. Unless you can buy one of the major parties, you're pretty much limited to lobbying the cross-bench Senators, because some of them take the quaint view that they are there to protect and promote the interests of their constituents, and some of them actually mean it.
If the cross-bench and opposition Senators are in the way of something a government wants badly enough, the government will give the cross-bench Senators just about anything they want. Note that in these circumstances the merits or otherwise of what the cross-bench Senators want will be of secondary relevance to the government's decision to give them what they want. The decision will be made primarily on the basis of how badly the government wants to get the blocked measure through.
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I'm sorry leadie, but your wrong. As is bendy flyer but for different reasons. The problem does lie with CASA because everything aviation except for airlines is a policy free zone. CASA's mandate is safety, they can do what they like under that mantra and they have. Anyone involved in aviation knows what it takes, just ask them, or read the countless posts here and the same goes for those in CASA, even if it's a military background. But it gets worse. Because CASA's only interest is safety, therefore every thing they implement must, by definition, be safe, even if it's demonstrably not. They believe their own garbage. The pollies and bureaucrats have nothing to do with it and haven't for decades. It's all CASA's doing.
Bendy, it was the Whitlam government that made the super department of transport under Clem Jones as minister. I suspect it was the Hawke government that made them into a government agency. The breakup of CAA into CASA and ATSB and AA was after an inquiry found that the regulator was far too close to the industry following a couple of high profile crashes that the CAA should have prevented.
It needs a reality check to stop the clusterf@@@ that is the present approach. Something so dramatic that it rubs the noses of the government in the dog poo that is our industry. Without death on an industrial scale and my preferred option is for the FAA to reaudit the place and mark it "fail".
Bendy, it was the Whitlam government that made the super department of transport under Clem Jones as minister. I suspect it was the Hawke government that made them into a government agency. The breakup of CAA into CASA and ATSB and AA was after an inquiry found that the regulator was far too close to the industry following a couple of high profile crashes that the CAA should have prevented.
It needs a reality check to stop the clusterf@@@ that is the present approach. Something so dramatic that it rubs the noses of the government in the dog poo that is our industry. Without death on an industrial scale and my preferred option is for the FAA to reaudit the place and mark it "fail".
What is the cause of the "policy free zone"? Who is responsible for making and implementing policy?
The answer to neither question is CASA, although, as your post shows, many think that answer is CASA. And that suits the people responsible, very nicely.
The answer to neither question is CASA, although, as your post shows, many think that answer is CASA. And that suits the people responsible, very nicely.
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Mr Lovett your reply shows you fail to understand points 1-10. I will accept the minor historical correction as to the very early genesis of CAA/CASA. The responsibility lies fairly and squarly with governments of all persuasions and their failure to understand the industry and governance generally. The only and I stress only remedy to correcting any of this is to actually have a policy from the elected representatives of our nation that puts into place a new Act with a definition of safety. The current situation is but the end game of a series of failures to do this.
No matter what people think is a quick fix the reality is that the regulatory regime retains within its core the notion and concept that it is regulating safety but in fact safety means regulating the industry and its economics (In other words it is the two airline policy in another guise). The regulator imposes regulations that ostensibly come and refer back to this central core. So everything that CASA does is an impediment and serious cost to the industry with no appreciable outcome or change to safety. Everyone in the industry world wide knows what the safety issues are and how to address them. We know what proper maintenance should be, what proper training should be and we know what are appropriate rules and safety standards, they have been known and established for nearly five decades. We know what causes accidents and we know that the basic errors that lead to accidents have not changed in several decades. More importantly we know and have available to us this collective wisdom in the form of the regulatory structures and systems developed and agreed upon by ICAO and ultimately all formed about the FAA system.
CASA should have no controlling role in private or recreational aviation and has attempted to treat everybody in this sector as if they were Qantas or whoever, they are not. The owners of the aircraft bear the risk and they know that the manufacturer set the standards for maintenance and design and that is the appropriate standard not a cobbled together variation dreamed up by somebody with nothing better to do and an organisation that cannot relinquish this control and leave the industry to manage both its own operations and the risk. Behind this stands the ultimate risk managers the insurance industry and they will not cover unacceptable risk, pure and simple.
CASA should have no need to impose or require AOC's on aerial agriculture or aerial mustering and require them to operate within a regime that is suited to a large scale heavy aircraft passenger transport operation. Similarly with aerial work as we call it. Now if you look at what I have just said you will see that this constitutes nearly three quarters or more of CASA's business and is simply regulation for regulations sake. All that is required is a simple rule that states you as a private owner or aerial agriculture operator or aerial mustering operation maintain the aircraft in accordance with the manufacturers recommendations nothing more nothing less. In other words you as the owner are simply responsible for airworthiness. Every normal person has a vested interest every day in every day activity in not destroying expensive capital or losing lives.
So these are but a few examples to illustrate how Government and CASA has lost sight of what safety is and how to manage it properly. Without an Act that simply makes this clear, is stripped of hidden economic regulatory rules and is supported by clear and simple plain english regulations that adopt international best practice you will reform nothing.
The greater tragedy in the past years is that despite numerous Commissions of Inquiry, numerous Senate Inquiries, numerous other ad-hoc inquiries, this message has not stuck, has not been implemented and thus the accident that is CASA and the Australian Aviation Industry will continue. It is Government that is to be held to account and it is the politicians of this country that should be held to account for this very serious and quite depressing situation but they are it seems for reasons of their make up and inner workings incapable of enacting or implementing change and quite simply impervious to reason and incapable of listening to the anybody.
No matter what people think is a quick fix the reality is that the regulatory regime retains within its core the notion and concept that it is regulating safety but in fact safety means regulating the industry and its economics (In other words it is the two airline policy in another guise). The regulator imposes regulations that ostensibly come and refer back to this central core. So everything that CASA does is an impediment and serious cost to the industry with no appreciable outcome or change to safety. Everyone in the industry world wide knows what the safety issues are and how to address them. We know what proper maintenance should be, what proper training should be and we know what are appropriate rules and safety standards, they have been known and established for nearly five decades. We know what causes accidents and we know that the basic errors that lead to accidents have not changed in several decades. More importantly we know and have available to us this collective wisdom in the form of the regulatory structures and systems developed and agreed upon by ICAO and ultimately all formed about the FAA system.
CASA should have no controlling role in private or recreational aviation and has attempted to treat everybody in this sector as if they were Qantas or whoever, they are not. The owners of the aircraft bear the risk and they know that the manufacturer set the standards for maintenance and design and that is the appropriate standard not a cobbled together variation dreamed up by somebody with nothing better to do and an organisation that cannot relinquish this control and leave the industry to manage both its own operations and the risk. Behind this stands the ultimate risk managers the insurance industry and they will not cover unacceptable risk, pure and simple.
CASA should have no need to impose or require AOC's on aerial agriculture or aerial mustering and require them to operate within a regime that is suited to a large scale heavy aircraft passenger transport operation. Similarly with aerial work as we call it. Now if you look at what I have just said you will see that this constitutes nearly three quarters or more of CASA's business and is simply regulation for regulations sake. All that is required is a simple rule that states you as a private owner or aerial agriculture operator or aerial mustering operation maintain the aircraft in accordance with the manufacturers recommendations nothing more nothing less. In other words you as the owner are simply responsible for airworthiness. Every normal person has a vested interest every day in every day activity in not destroying expensive capital or losing lives.
So these are but a few examples to illustrate how Government and CASA has lost sight of what safety is and how to manage it properly. Without an Act that simply makes this clear, is stripped of hidden economic regulatory rules and is supported by clear and simple plain english regulations that adopt international best practice you will reform nothing.
The greater tragedy in the past years is that despite numerous Commissions of Inquiry, numerous Senate Inquiries, numerous other ad-hoc inquiries, this message has not stuck, has not been implemented and thus the accident that is CASA and the Australian Aviation Industry will continue. It is Government that is to be held to account and it is the politicians of this country that should be held to account for this very serious and quite depressing situation but they are it seems for reasons of their make up and inner workings incapable of enacting or implementing change and quite simply impervious to reason and incapable of listening to the anybody.
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This video is Dr Samara McPheran talking on a completely different but very parallel topic. You may or may not be interested in the "topic" but have a listen and replace the topic of firearms with aviation and then have a close listen to what she says about ministers and staffers.........Pb Balloon is correct!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dOEON-H9BQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dOEON-H9BQ