Regulatory Reform ‘Aussie Style’ – An Occasional Series – Airspace
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Regulatory Reform ‘Aussie Style’ – An Occasional Series – Airspace
The following passages are verbatim from pages 41 to 44 inclusive, of the 8 February 1999 Official Committee Hansard of the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee: A copy is available at: <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/commttee/s2066.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/commttee/s2066.pdf</a>
Senator CALVERT—Could you tell us why, in your opinion as a senior pilot or former senior pilot, the pilots union will be so violently opposed to something that should improve safety for everybody?
Mr Toller—That is a very valid question. I wish I could keep the answers as short as they should be. When I first took this job I put forward what I call the Galapagos theory, which basically says that Australia evolved totally differently to the rest of the world in its aviation legislation and its aviation operations. What we are in the process of doing at the moment is undoing all the differences that exist between the old system and the system that exists everywhere else in the world. That is not to say that what was happening in Australia was necessarily wrong. It was just totally different. I do not think you will find the international pilots have any resistance to airspace changes whatsoever. In fact, they fly in all sorts of ICAO airspace, international airspace throughout the world, including class E in 747s at times without thinking about it. They just take it as normal anywhere else in the world.
CHAIR—Roughly how many different systems are there in the world?
Mr Toller—There is a basic ICAO model, the United Nations model, which is generally adopted by virtually every state in the world. We are probably the most different from the ICAO model in that our current system of having flight service officers who are not air traffic controllers looking after traffic in the low levels is unique to Australia.
Mr Toller—It has worked but I would not say it is an optimum system for the future. I think it is probably creaking a bit at the seams at the moment. I think this is a generational issue. The pilots that are currently well ensconced in their careers were brought up in the old system. Pre-1991 they were allowed to know not only where all the IFR traffic was—in other words, the ones that were important—but also the VFR traffic, the people who were flying visually. The big conceptual difference between Australia and the rest of the world is this view of the professional pilot that he needs to know at all times where every other aircraft is.
Everywhere else in the world it is reversed. People who are flying visually accept the fact that it is their job to stay out of the way of the lanes where the other aircraft fly or, if they are all mixing in the same airspace near the airport, they will actually visually keep looking out of their cockpit because it is their responsibility to stay away. The responsibility has always been reversed in Australia so that the responsibility is on the pilot who is under IFR to know where everything else is and keep himself away from it. I call it ‘fly by radio’. How they do it I just do not know at times. It is a unique system.
Senator MACKAY—Just a quick question. I am not as diplomatic as Senator Woodley. Who was the airline?
Mr Toller—I would rather not say.
Senator MACKAY—Well, Qantas had already suspended. I do not see why—I think you may have to—
Senator Ian Macdonald—Mr Toller has already said that he is not going to say, so why bother? Why continue?
Senator MACKAY—Is that fair enough, Chair?
CHAIR—I think so. In all fairness, the witness has said that he did not wish to name the airline. I do not think it is fair to try and get it through the back door. He has made his position clear.
Senator MACKAY—The only reason I ask is that it seemed to be a pivotal incident which convinced Mr Toller to in fact suspend the trial.
Mr Toller—No, I would not accept that. That was not a pivotal incident in my decision. It was useful background knowledge as to what was happening outside in the world, if you like.
Senator MACKAY—You mentioned the bottom drawer letter that could be pulled out at any point, et cetera.
CHAIR—Is that available, by the way?
Mr Toller—I shredded my copy.
Senator MACKAY—You can always look at the letterhead.
Mr D. Smith—There is a very important part which I think should be mentioned—I have to mention this—and that is that also the department had been phoned with a similar statement that Ansett were going to announce—I said the name—
Senator MACKAY—We worked out it was Ansett.
Mr D. Smith—You all worked it out. They were going to announce, publish a document, saying that they were withdrawing from the airspace or doing something like that. That was, we understand, phoned through to the department, to Peter Harris, and that threat—everyone would know the damage it would do to Mick Toller with him supporting the airspace and a major airline coming out against it but, as I mentioned, it was the same person who had also threatened in relation to the E airspace, but it was very much, I think, threats coming up the line from the industrial organisation.
Senator MACKAY—But this did not come from the industrial side. It came from the administrative side of Ansett.
Mr D. Smith—Yes, but the person actually said to me—and I will mention his name, Trevor Jensen—‘I’d rather be open about this. It’s air safety. It’s got incredible national importance. It’s a non-party political matter. It’s important for all of us. Dick, I agree with Mick that the airspace is safer, but if my pilots union’—or whatever it was—‘won’t fly in it, I won’t support it.’ I could tell that he had enormous pressure because I went on and I said, ‘Well, look, your pilots in that particular union only fly to Taree and Port Macquarie’ or wherever it is, ‘and they have never had any experience in international airspace,’ and he then got very angry with me, which showed that he was under immense pressure, and basically said that that was irrelevant; if his pilots would not fly in it, that was it. You cannot do airspace design that way; you simply cannot.
Senator MACKAY—I might leave it there, Chair, for the moment.
Senator BROWN—Gentlemen, I am horrified by what is unfolding here because the logic of it is to me that you are giving clear testimony that a system which was safer for the travelling public of Australia has been abandoned. Mr Smith has said that we have a very safe system—and Australians need to know that—but what we are hearing here is that an even safer system has been abandoned due to pressure, including letters in the bottom of drawers of people who were wielding that pressure. This is despite the fact that we had evidence earlier from departmental heads that they knew of no such pressure. One of the consequences of this is, of course, to question whether the minister stood behind his adviser—behind you, Mr Toller—because he knew that your opinion was that this system was safer. But he says, ‘You make the decision.’ The decision is to abandon the system. I cannot believe that Minister Anderson could allow that to happen, because ultimately the buck stops with the minister, and he is the responsible minister to ensure that Australia not only has a very safe system but has the safest system available in the world.
We have heard that the UK civil aviation authority gave advice that this system with modification—that is, adding ground to air advice at the airports—would be as safe as anything in the UK, which I take as an enormous compliment to that potential system because of the sheer added air traffic and danger of crashes in the UK. Yet what we hear is that the system has been abandoned because the ground to air facility—somebody, Mr Smith has said, holding a phone at airports like Taree or presumably Bathurst or other places—the airlines were not prepared to put such a person in to give us the safest system possible. That seems like a commercial consideration coming into the matter. Was it a commercial consideration, do you think, that the airlines opposed putting somebody in to the regional airports, or is there some other reason as to why the airlines opposed having somebody at the regional airports?
Mr Toller—I cannot obviously answer for the airlines themselves. I do not believe there are any significant commercial reasons. I think the safety dollar is critical to the major airlines. They do not generally object to spending reasonable and sensible amounts of money which would increase the safety of their operations. Rather than put the finger on the final decision to terminate on the airlines, as far as I was concerned it was the issue of the BASI recommendation. The BASI recommendation states that it believed that the class G airspace demonstration had served its purpose and, in the light of the safety concerns identified by this investigation, BASI recommends that CASA should now terminate the demonstration.
It would be very difficult to respond. Having said to the minister, ‘If anybody shows any significant safety concerns about this demonstration, I will terminate it,’ with that sort of a recommendation coming from a body with the reputation as good as BASI’s is, then I could not have upheld my position, I do not believe. My only defence, if you like, on this was that we were going back to a system which we knew worked. It was not as if we were going back into a system that we did not know worked.
Senator BROWN—The problem, Mr Toller, is that we are going back to a system that, at best, in some circumstances is as good but overall is not as safe as the system that was being demonstrated. Even that BASI report, from what I hear, does not say that this system, the radar system, is less safe. Is that not the case?
Mr Toller—That is correct.
Senator BROWN—I will allow you to answer in the fullest way possible, but the Bureau of Air Safety Investigation brings up a report which demonstrably fails to say that the radar system is less safe, therefore less in the interests of the travelling Australian public, but as a result of that report the system is abandoned. So a safer system is abandoned to go back to an older, less safe system. That is illogical. That is bad for the air travelling public of Australia. There is something wrong about a system which allows that to happen. How is it that BASI could have come up with a report which says, ‘Abandon the system which is safer’?
Mr Toller—I think that is the question you have to ask BASI.
Senator BROWN—They are coming in shortly and I hope they are listening to this questioning session, because the next question I will put to them—and I will put it to you now—
Senator Ian Macdonald—If they are things for BASI, do you think it better for BASI—
Senator BROWN—No, because I think we do not have a composite here. I think we have a fundamental disagreement—that BASI has prevailed—and I think that that has been wrong. But what I want to know here, just as a matter of logic, is: a report that says to abandon this system ought to have come up with a comparison of safety from the pre-radar days with pilots using their radios and the radar test. Is there a comparison of the safety? Is there any way that that could be measured that has turned up in this report to say that the demonstration system, the radar system, was not as safe?
Mr Toller—The first point I would make I think is that this is only an interim report and it was only an interim recommendation. It was done, shall we just say, fairly rapidly compared to the length of time that most investigations take. This was a systemic investigation, so it was a very broad one. We are still giving evidence to BASI, we are still giving documents, as of last week, to BASI to support our case for how we believe the issues concerned with the demonstration should be looked at.
I mentioned last week to some of the BASI investigators that in my view, having given them all the information that we now have, the report should actually be reversed but, of course, on a practical basis it is too late. My concern is actually where do we go from here, rather than what has gone on previously. If you accept the fact that it is critical that we accept as a philosophy, and it is government policy to harmonise the airspace with ICAO airspace, to introduce airspace that does not confuse international pilots. Our present airspace does confuse international pilots, which is ridiculous—airspace that is recognisable in its safety standards with every other country in the world that uses the ICAO system, how do we continue to go forward with that? We have to accept that we must. What is the time-scale in which we can do it? So it is where do we move to from now to reintroduce, albeit maybe somewhat modified, the concepts that we were trialling with the class G demonstration.
Mr D. Smith—Could I add to that answer? The only sensible thing to do with the BASI report was to compare the old and the new and that could have been done with twice as many people in the same time, or a little bit longer. As Mick Toller mentioned, in the last two weeks of the demonstration it was all starting to work. He rang me up at one stage—if you remember—and he said, ‘It’s only been seven weeks. There are always training problems, people who resist change, but it’s all starting to work.’ In February, or maybe a bit earlier, when we knew we were going to have the radio operators in we were going to have an international airspace system that was safer. This BASI report must have been rushed out because it is deficient. It says, ‘We don’t know and it’s not possible at this stage to compare the overall safety level of the class G airspace demonstration with that of the previous system.’ The first thing I said when I read this is ‘Well, why are we stopping it?’
Senator BROWN—Exactly!
Mr D. Smith—I believe there is another agenda. I believe that BASI was forced in some way. I might be wrong, but I can only use commonsense.
Senator BROWN—I am horrified—I say that again—and if there was no comparison done, it is not scientific, it is not logical, and it is not in the interests of the travelling public of this country that such a system which, on the face of it, everybody is saying is safer has been abandoned. I am very concerned to hear that it means that the system cannot be brought back on. I do not know how we do this in a committee like this, but perhaps we ask the minister how he could have endorsed such a decision for the end of a system which was safer knowing what this committee is hearing now.
I want to, however, get to the specifics while we can. Mr Toller, we have heard about a letter in a bottom drawer or which somebody said they would keep in a bottom drawer from I think, if I have got this right—and please disabuse me if I am wrong—Mr Trevor Jensen at Ansett, the contents of which were unacceptable to you, and a new draft was sent, and then you shredded it. Can you just tell the committee again what that letter said.
Mr Toller—Basically it said there would be a letter from the board safety committee, after their discussions that morning, to say that the trial must be terminated.
Senator BROWN—What is the board safety committee?
Mr Toller—I think every airline board probably has a subcommittee which takes responsibility for safety issues and reports back to the main board.
Senator BROWN—Did the board safety committee make that decision?
Mr Toller—I cannot comment on that. My information was that no, they did not, and it was not even discussed.
Mr D. Smith—I can comment on that. I spoke to Rod Eddington and he said they did not.
Senator BROWN—Who is Rod Eddington?
Mr D. Smith—He is the CEO of Ansett.
Mr Toller—The Executive Chairman of Ansett.
Senator BROWN—So we have got an individual in Ansett putting pressure on you, using the influence of Ansett’s board safety committee, without the knowledge of the committee, on the face of it, and without the committee having made a decision that he said they had made, or were about to make. That needs investigation. What was your response? Did you write back?
Mr Toller—No, because I never got the letter formally. I said to him at the time if that letter was released, did he realise that it would mean that I would have to resign. He rang me back and said, ‘We don’t want you to resign so we’ve changed the wording slightly and basically it’s now only going to suggest that you terminate the trial, but we won’t send it anyway, we’ll just keep it in the bottom drawer.’ That was the statement.
Senator BROWN—That is terrible. Mr Toller, you have been put in an intolerable situation. You are describing to the committee a situation in which an operator of an airline is not only acting without the authority of the airline’s board safety committee which he was using to exert influence, but he is saying he is going to keep this over your head by putting it in his drawer, a situation which would force you to resign if you did not do what he wanted.
Mr Toller—Yes.
Senator BROWN—Anybody listening to this, including the travelling public, is going to be mortified. There is going to have to be a further investigation into that. I leave it to the chair as to whether this committee can do more about that. I would certainly like to have Mr Jensen come before the committee to explain those actions.
Sir, I just want to go back to the UK authority giving advice as to how we could improve this system. We have heard that that survey via that UK authority cost over $100,000 and that it would be made watertight by having the ground to air radio contact that Mr Smith spoke. .…
Senator CALVERT—Could you tell us why, in your opinion as a senior pilot or former senior pilot, the pilots union will be so violently opposed to something that should improve safety for everybody?
Mr Toller—That is a very valid question. I wish I could keep the answers as short as they should be. When I first took this job I put forward what I call the Galapagos theory, which basically says that Australia evolved totally differently to the rest of the world in its aviation legislation and its aviation operations. What we are in the process of doing at the moment is undoing all the differences that exist between the old system and the system that exists everywhere else in the world. That is not to say that what was happening in Australia was necessarily wrong. It was just totally different. I do not think you will find the international pilots have any resistance to airspace changes whatsoever. In fact, they fly in all sorts of ICAO airspace, international airspace throughout the world, including class E in 747s at times without thinking about it. They just take it as normal anywhere else in the world.
CHAIR—Roughly how many different systems are there in the world?
Mr Toller—There is a basic ICAO model, the United Nations model, which is generally adopted by virtually every state in the world. We are probably the most different from the ICAO model in that our current system of having flight service officers who are not air traffic controllers looking after traffic in the low levels is unique to Australia.
Mr Toller—It has worked but I would not say it is an optimum system for the future. I think it is probably creaking a bit at the seams at the moment. I think this is a generational issue. The pilots that are currently well ensconced in their careers were brought up in the old system. Pre-1991 they were allowed to know not only where all the IFR traffic was—in other words, the ones that were important—but also the VFR traffic, the people who were flying visually. The big conceptual difference between Australia and the rest of the world is this view of the professional pilot that he needs to know at all times where every other aircraft is.
Everywhere else in the world it is reversed. People who are flying visually accept the fact that it is their job to stay out of the way of the lanes where the other aircraft fly or, if they are all mixing in the same airspace near the airport, they will actually visually keep looking out of their cockpit because it is their responsibility to stay away. The responsibility has always been reversed in Australia so that the responsibility is on the pilot who is under IFR to know where everything else is and keep himself away from it. I call it ‘fly by radio’. How they do it I just do not know at times. It is a unique system.
Senator MACKAY—Just a quick question. I am not as diplomatic as Senator Woodley. Who was the airline?
Mr Toller—I would rather not say.
Senator MACKAY—Well, Qantas had already suspended. I do not see why—I think you may have to—
Senator Ian Macdonald—Mr Toller has already said that he is not going to say, so why bother? Why continue?
Senator MACKAY—Is that fair enough, Chair?
CHAIR—I think so. In all fairness, the witness has said that he did not wish to name the airline. I do not think it is fair to try and get it through the back door. He has made his position clear.
Senator MACKAY—The only reason I ask is that it seemed to be a pivotal incident which convinced Mr Toller to in fact suspend the trial.
Mr Toller—No, I would not accept that. That was not a pivotal incident in my decision. It was useful background knowledge as to what was happening outside in the world, if you like.
Senator MACKAY—You mentioned the bottom drawer letter that could be pulled out at any point, et cetera.
CHAIR—Is that available, by the way?
Mr Toller—I shredded my copy.
Senator MACKAY—You can always look at the letterhead.
Mr D. Smith—There is a very important part which I think should be mentioned—I have to mention this—and that is that also the department had been phoned with a similar statement that Ansett were going to announce—I said the name—
Senator MACKAY—We worked out it was Ansett.
Mr D. Smith—You all worked it out. They were going to announce, publish a document, saying that they were withdrawing from the airspace or doing something like that. That was, we understand, phoned through to the department, to Peter Harris, and that threat—everyone would know the damage it would do to Mick Toller with him supporting the airspace and a major airline coming out against it but, as I mentioned, it was the same person who had also threatened in relation to the E airspace, but it was very much, I think, threats coming up the line from the industrial organisation.
Senator MACKAY—But this did not come from the industrial side. It came from the administrative side of Ansett.
Mr D. Smith—Yes, but the person actually said to me—and I will mention his name, Trevor Jensen—‘I’d rather be open about this. It’s air safety. It’s got incredible national importance. It’s a non-party political matter. It’s important for all of us. Dick, I agree with Mick that the airspace is safer, but if my pilots union’—or whatever it was—‘won’t fly in it, I won’t support it.’ I could tell that he had enormous pressure because I went on and I said, ‘Well, look, your pilots in that particular union only fly to Taree and Port Macquarie’ or wherever it is, ‘and they have never had any experience in international airspace,’ and he then got very angry with me, which showed that he was under immense pressure, and basically said that that was irrelevant; if his pilots would not fly in it, that was it. You cannot do airspace design that way; you simply cannot.
Senator MACKAY—I might leave it there, Chair, for the moment.
Senator BROWN—Gentlemen, I am horrified by what is unfolding here because the logic of it is to me that you are giving clear testimony that a system which was safer for the travelling public of Australia has been abandoned. Mr Smith has said that we have a very safe system—and Australians need to know that—but what we are hearing here is that an even safer system has been abandoned due to pressure, including letters in the bottom of drawers of people who were wielding that pressure. This is despite the fact that we had evidence earlier from departmental heads that they knew of no such pressure. One of the consequences of this is, of course, to question whether the minister stood behind his adviser—behind you, Mr Toller—because he knew that your opinion was that this system was safer. But he says, ‘You make the decision.’ The decision is to abandon the system. I cannot believe that Minister Anderson could allow that to happen, because ultimately the buck stops with the minister, and he is the responsible minister to ensure that Australia not only has a very safe system but has the safest system available in the world.
We have heard that the UK civil aviation authority gave advice that this system with modification—that is, adding ground to air advice at the airports—would be as safe as anything in the UK, which I take as an enormous compliment to that potential system because of the sheer added air traffic and danger of crashes in the UK. Yet what we hear is that the system has been abandoned because the ground to air facility—somebody, Mr Smith has said, holding a phone at airports like Taree or presumably Bathurst or other places—the airlines were not prepared to put such a person in to give us the safest system possible. That seems like a commercial consideration coming into the matter. Was it a commercial consideration, do you think, that the airlines opposed putting somebody in to the regional airports, or is there some other reason as to why the airlines opposed having somebody at the regional airports?
Mr Toller—I cannot obviously answer for the airlines themselves. I do not believe there are any significant commercial reasons. I think the safety dollar is critical to the major airlines. They do not generally object to spending reasonable and sensible amounts of money which would increase the safety of their operations. Rather than put the finger on the final decision to terminate on the airlines, as far as I was concerned it was the issue of the BASI recommendation. The BASI recommendation states that it believed that the class G airspace demonstration had served its purpose and, in the light of the safety concerns identified by this investigation, BASI recommends that CASA should now terminate the demonstration.
It would be very difficult to respond. Having said to the minister, ‘If anybody shows any significant safety concerns about this demonstration, I will terminate it,’ with that sort of a recommendation coming from a body with the reputation as good as BASI’s is, then I could not have upheld my position, I do not believe. My only defence, if you like, on this was that we were going back to a system which we knew worked. It was not as if we were going back into a system that we did not know worked.
Senator BROWN—The problem, Mr Toller, is that we are going back to a system that, at best, in some circumstances is as good but overall is not as safe as the system that was being demonstrated. Even that BASI report, from what I hear, does not say that this system, the radar system, is less safe. Is that not the case?
Mr Toller—That is correct.
Senator BROWN—I will allow you to answer in the fullest way possible, but the Bureau of Air Safety Investigation brings up a report which demonstrably fails to say that the radar system is less safe, therefore less in the interests of the travelling Australian public, but as a result of that report the system is abandoned. So a safer system is abandoned to go back to an older, less safe system. That is illogical. That is bad for the air travelling public of Australia. There is something wrong about a system which allows that to happen. How is it that BASI could have come up with a report which says, ‘Abandon the system which is safer’?
Mr Toller—I think that is the question you have to ask BASI.
Senator BROWN—They are coming in shortly and I hope they are listening to this questioning session, because the next question I will put to them—and I will put it to you now—
Senator Ian Macdonald—If they are things for BASI, do you think it better for BASI—
Senator BROWN—No, because I think we do not have a composite here. I think we have a fundamental disagreement—that BASI has prevailed—and I think that that has been wrong. But what I want to know here, just as a matter of logic, is: a report that says to abandon this system ought to have come up with a comparison of safety from the pre-radar days with pilots using their radios and the radar test. Is there a comparison of the safety? Is there any way that that could be measured that has turned up in this report to say that the demonstration system, the radar system, was not as safe?
Mr Toller—The first point I would make I think is that this is only an interim report and it was only an interim recommendation. It was done, shall we just say, fairly rapidly compared to the length of time that most investigations take. This was a systemic investigation, so it was a very broad one. We are still giving evidence to BASI, we are still giving documents, as of last week, to BASI to support our case for how we believe the issues concerned with the demonstration should be looked at.
I mentioned last week to some of the BASI investigators that in my view, having given them all the information that we now have, the report should actually be reversed but, of course, on a practical basis it is too late. My concern is actually where do we go from here, rather than what has gone on previously. If you accept the fact that it is critical that we accept as a philosophy, and it is government policy to harmonise the airspace with ICAO airspace, to introduce airspace that does not confuse international pilots. Our present airspace does confuse international pilots, which is ridiculous—airspace that is recognisable in its safety standards with every other country in the world that uses the ICAO system, how do we continue to go forward with that? We have to accept that we must. What is the time-scale in which we can do it? So it is where do we move to from now to reintroduce, albeit maybe somewhat modified, the concepts that we were trialling with the class G demonstration.
Mr D. Smith—Could I add to that answer? The only sensible thing to do with the BASI report was to compare the old and the new and that could have been done with twice as many people in the same time, or a little bit longer. As Mick Toller mentioned, in the last two weeks of the demonstration it was all starting to work. He rang me up at one stage—if you remember—and he said, ‘It’s only been seven weeks. There are always training problems, people who resist change, but it’s all starting to work.’ In February, or maybe a bit earlier, when we knew we were going to have the radio operators in we were going to have an international airspace system that was safer. This BASI report must have been rushed out because it is deficient. It says, ‘We don’t know and it’s not possible at this stage to compare the overall safety level of the class G airspace demonstration with that of the previous system.’ The first thing I said when I read this is ‘Well, why are we stopping it?’
Senator BROWN—Exactly!
Mr D. Smith—I believe there is another agenda. I believe that BASI was forced in some way. I might be wrong, but I can only use commonsense.
Senator BROWN—I am horrified—I say that again—and if there was no comparison done, it is not scientific, it is not logical, and it is not in the interests of the travelling public of this country that such a system which, on the face of it, everybody is saying is safer has been abandoned. I am very concerned to hear that it means that the system cannot be brought back on. I do not know how we do this in a committee like this, but perhaps we ask the minister how he could have endorsed such a decision for the end of a system which was safer knowing what this committee is hearing now.
I want to, however, get to the specifics while we can. Mr Toller, we have heard about a letter in a bottom drawer or which somebody said they would keep in a bottom drawer from I think, if I have got this right—and please disabuse me if I am wrong—Mr Trevor Jensen at Ansett, the contents of which were unacceptable to you, and a new draft was sent, and then you shredded it. Can you just tell the committee again what that letter said.
Mr Toller—Basically it said there would be a letter from the board safety committee, after their discussions that morning, to say that the trial must be terminated.
Senator BROWN—What is the board safety committee?
Mr Toller—I think every airline board probably has a subcommittee which takes responsibility for safety issues and reports back to the main board.
Senator BROWN—Did the board safety committee make that decision?
Mr Toller—I cannot comment on that. My information was that no, they did not, and it was not even discussed.
Mr D. Smith—I can comment on that. I spoke to Rod Eddington and he said they did not.
Senator BROWN—Who is Rod Eddington?
Mr D. Smith—He is the CEO of Ansett.
Mr Toller—The Executive Chairman of Ansett.
Senator BROWN—So we have got an individual in Ansett putting pressure on you, using the influence of Ansett’s board safety committee, without the knowledge of the committee, on the face of it, and without the committee having made a decision that he said they had made, or were about to make. That needs investigation. What was your response? Did you write back?
Mr Toller—No, because I never got the letter formally. I said to him at the time if that letter was released, did he realise that it would mean that I would have to resign. He rang me back and said, ‘We don’t want you to resign so we’ve changed the wording slightly and basically it’s now only going to suggest that you terminate the trial, but we won’t send it anyway, we’ll just keep it in the bottom drawer.’ That was the statement.
Senator BROWN—That is terrible. Mr Toller, you have been put in an intolerable situation. You are describing to the committee a situation in which an operator of an airline is not only acting without the authority of the airline’s board safety committee which he was using to exert influence, but he is saying he is going to keep this over your head by putting it in his drawer, a situation which would force you to resign if you did not do what he wanted.
Mr Toller—Yes.
Senator BROWN—Anybody listening to this, including the travelling public, is going to be mortified. There is going to have to be a further investigation into that. I leave it to the chair as to whether this committee can do more about that. I would certainly like to have Mr Jensen come before the committee to explain those actions.
Sir, I just want to go back to the UK authority giving advice as to how we could improve this system. We have heard that that survey via that UK authority cost over $100,000 and that it would be made watertight by having the ground to air radio contact that Mr Smith spoke. .…
Creampuff
Might I suggest you refrain from posting page on page of Hansard to this forum? The bandwidth of this system is bad enough without compounding the problem. A short summary of the point you are making and the URL would suffice I think.
10/10 for enthusiasm though <img src="smile.gif" border="0">
Might I suggest you refrain from posting page on page of Hansard to this forum? The bandwidth of this system is bad enough without compounding the problem. A short summary of the point you are making and the URL would suffice I think.
10/10 for enthusiasm though <img src="smile.gif" border="0">
Thread Starter
CaptainMidnight - thanks.
I'm not sure whether your views about the length of posts and bandwidth represent those of the pprune management. If so - point taken. If not - my preference is to post the material (which, so far as I can tell, takes up no more 'bandwidth' than a thread with lots of responses). There are very good reasons for posting Hansard verbatim, rather than putting one's own 'spin' on what was said.
I'm not sure whether your views about the length of posts and bandwidth represent those of the pprune management. If so - point taken. If not - my preference is to post the material (which, so far as I can tell, takes up no more 'bandwidth' than a thread with lots of responses). There are very good reasons for posting Hansard verbatim, rather than putting one's own 'spin' on what was said.
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Yup
The dog did eat my homework and I have been busy with a flock of turkeys, has not gone unnoticed but does deserve a response. Soon.
.......decides that dealing with turkeys must finish, sends Purdey under and over family heirloom to gunsmith for major inspection, starts collecting nasty shrapnel bits and setting up cartridge loader........ <img src="wink.gif" border="0">
With apologies to Arnie;. .I'll be back. <img src="eek.gif" border="0">
The dog did eat my homework and I have been busy with a flock of turkeys, has not gone unnoticed but does deserve a response. Soon.
.......decides that dealing with turkeys must finish, sends Purdey under and over family heirloom to gunsmith for major inspection, starts collecting nasty shrapnel bits and setting up cartridge loader........ <img src="wink.gif" border="0">
With apologies to Arnie;. .I'll be back. <img src="eek.gif" border="0">
