Barriers To Prosperity: Red Tape And The Regulatory State In Australia

[Lead Balloon]

Thorn bird: Pages of regulations (1988 + 1998) plus civil aviation orders plus manuals of standards plus determinations, permissions, approvals and exemptions?

My estimate, based on a page count of the more substantial bits of the dog’s breakfast: Around 30,000 pages and growing.

I doubt whether anyone could reasonably be confident of knowing and understanding the entirety of the current Australian civil aviation regulatory regime. I would presume any claimant of that knowledge and understanding to be a psychopath or insane.

[Stab Bar]

I bet you started flying after 2000/2001.

No, in the 80s. The AIP is perhaps the least worst of the documents, put it that way. Less legalese.

[Horatio Leafblower]

No, in the 80s. The AIP is perhaps the least worst of the documents, put it that way. Less legalese.

I stand corrected.
Nonetheless, it was certainly better back when we were lads. O'course, ye tell the yoong pilots o'today tha' and th'ne'er belive ye.

[Ex FSO GRIFFO]

So, it begs the question.....

How does any budding 'CPL' candidate possibly pass an 'Air Leg' exam.
(or it s equivalent) these days....

No cheers

[Lead Balloon]

They rote learn the answers dictated by the regulator. That way the regulator perpetuates the regulator’s folklore.

The scary thing is that many candidates go on to believe the folklore.

[LeadSled]

I doubt whether anyone could reasonably be confident of knowing and understanding the entirety of the current Australian civil aviation regulatory regime.
I would presume any claimant of that knowledge and understanding to be a psychopath or insane.

Folks,
Hence the gulf between the "Rule of Law" and "Rule by Law".
Tootle pip!!

PS: At least (as far as I know??) the CASA CEO/DAS doesn't have power of the Tax Commissioner that, paraphrased, says:

The Commissioner may deem that some that has not happened has happened, and;
The Commissioner may deem that something that has happened has not happened.

Imagine what some FOIs and AWIs of my acquaintance could do with that!!

[aroa]

Leady,
Nothing imaginary about that. For some FOIs its a CAsA cultural practice.!!
for example....
A certain type of aircraft has a large, one piece, (singular) elevator, 3.72 mtrs long.

THREE AWIs of supreme aircraft knowledge and observational skills, saw a person looking at that elevator.

Three almost identical sworn statements to be used for a criminal conviction all state that 'they saw left and right elevators being removed and replaced' !!

Ms N Tredrea, Compilance and Enforcement finds that the failed case is just due to one AWI..inadvertently using the generic term elevators (plural) by mistake !

The infamous Head of Legal acrobatics and Spin Docteur Extrordinaire, Smart Aleck, postulates it was just ..'discrepancies in the wording' !

Hullo..?? were these northern awis , affected by the tropic sun, smoking something really good...or just plain liars.
You decide.

And over and above the Rule of Law,,,CAsA has the Law of Rules.

And when they want to do you over anything goes.
AND CAsA will go to any length to make sure they get away with it.
CYA 101 thru 120 and then some.

[LeadSled]

Aroa,
But you see, if it had been the Tax Commissioner, he would have been able to "deem" that a one piece stabilator was, in fact, a horizontal stabiliser with multi-piece elevators, and that would have been admissible in court.

A much more legally neat and tidy way of hiding the behavior that you suffered at the hands of persons who swore statutory declarations that contained clearly false, indeed, impossible to achieve, allegation of activities by your good-self.

Tootle pip!!

[Roller Merlin]

A previous CEO of CASA lamented to me some years ago that "...everything now has to go through "Legal"..he was simply not allowed by Government to create plain english orders. It seems that our Government's strategy is for the lawyers to determine the final orders issued from the Fort out to the troops, and therein lies the issue!

[LeadSled]

"...everything now has to go through "Legal".

Roller Merlin,
If it is the same one who said something similar to me, what he meant was that he couldn't make the law to suit himself, that he should have what he understood (quite incorrectly) as the delegated law making authority of the FAA Administrator.
If it is the same one, he also said to the then Minister, in my presence: "Minister, If I had to have proof of offenses, I would need another 100 investigators".
There are far to many in CASA with the mindset that they "know when somebody is guilty".
Tootle pip!!

[Frank Arouet]

Then there was the DME who told me, "treat me like God and we'll get on just fine. I think this was "medico legal advice".

[vne165]

Originally Posted by Lead Balloon

Thorn bird: Pages of regulations (1988 + 1998) plus civil aviation orders plus manuals of standards plus determinations, permissions, approvals and exemptions?

My estimate, based on a page count of the more substantial bits of the dog’s breakfast: Around 30,000 pages and growing.

I doubt whether anyone could reasonably be confident of knowing and understanding the entirety of the current Australian civil aviation regulatory regime. I would presume any claimant of that knowledge and understanding to be a psychopath or insane.

This thread is worth persisting with. And I'd suggest a picture may be worth a thousand words (or 30,000 pages in this case). If anyone is mad enough to have hard copies of this 'dog's breakfast' of paperwork, I'd love to see it all stacked beside an aircraft.
In what would be a delicious irony, I'm guessing it would exceed the MTOW if you loaded it all up...perhaps for a LSA or a homebuilt anyway. Given that a single sheet of 80gsm A4 weighs 5g.....that's 150kgs in paper alone.

Then a second picture with the equivalent AIPs/CAOs from 20 years ago. Might be a useful illustration of where things are and perhaps someone might run with it to make the point.
Just a thought..

[Lead Balloon]

This lot adds up to just over 5,000 pages:

CAR 1988: 538
CARS 1998: 1808

CAO 20.6: 2
CAO 20.7.1: 8
CAO 20.7.1B: 15
CAO 20.7.2: 5
CAO 20.7.4: 5
CAO 20.10.1: 5
CAO 20.17: 3
CAO 20.18: 34
CAO 20.21: 3
CAO 20.9: 13
CAO 20.91: 96
CAO 29.3: 5
CAO 29.4: 6
CAO 29.5: 6
CAO 29.10: 3
CAO 48.1: 63
CAO 92.1: 19
CAO 82.0: 53
CAO 82.3: 33
CAO 82.5: 32
CAO 82.6: 46
CAO 82.7: 8
CAO 95.4: 6
CAO 95.4.1: 7
CAO 95.5: 6
CAO 95.7: 6
CAO 95.8: 6
CAO 95.12: 8
CAO 95.12.1: 10
CAO 95.14: 4
CAO 95.22: 2
CAO 95.32: 10
CAO 95.53: 3
CAO 95.54: 7
CAO 95.55: 11
CAO 95.56: 2
CAO 100.5: 44
CAO 100.7: 8
CAO 100.16: 8
CAO 100.23: 3
CAO 100.27: 4
CAO 100.28: 4
CAO 100.90: 17
CAO 100.91: 4
CAO 100.93: 5
CAO 100.94: 4
CAP 100.95: 4
CAO 100.96: 3
CAO 100.24: 2
CAO 101.28: 12
CAO 101.54: 10
CAO 103.19: 5
CAO 103.20: 8
CAO 104.0: 17
CAO 108.8: 9
CAO 108.10: 8
CAO 108.29: 6

Part 21 MOS: 46
Part 42 MOS: 33
Part 61 MOS: 664
Part 65 MOS: 102
Part 66 MOS: 144
Part 90 MOS: 22
Part 91U MOS: 32
Part 132 MOS: 18
Part 139 MOS: 473
Part 139H MOS: 69
Part 143 MOS: 14
Part 145 MOS: 30
Part 147 MOS: 11
Part 171 MOS: 16
Part 172 MOS: 148
Part 173 MOS: 110

There are bits missing from the above, and some of the page counts could be a couple out.

When I tried to get a handle on all the directions, determinations, permissions, approvals and one-off exemptions I lost the will to live.

[Piltdown Man]

The problems are the Aussies themselves. There are a few different sorts of Aussies. The vast majority are the straight forward, “let’s get it done” guys who have no problem with hard work, quality, craftsmanship etc. Then there’s the managers and adminstrators who have to keep up with the workers. And let’s not forget the bludgers, one of the overheads of society. But the biggest overheads are the tools who sit in government offices constantly interfering with the imperfect world that they see. They are so far removed from reality they haven’t a clue, but everything they do is about “maintaining strict Australian standards” and who is better than anyone in creating them? Why, it must be themselves. Standing behind these people are your lovely pernicious, progressive politicians and the legal parasites who make a living out the damage created by the previous few groups. Not surprising the majority try to distance themselves from these “elite” groups and have given them the room they need to carry on without restrictions. Maybe their tentacles have now spread too far and too wide and they have strangled the society which they purport to serve. Is it now time to get some useful politicians and do some book burning?

[TBM-Legend]

So true...

UK was the nation of shop keepers and Australia the nation of bureaucrats!

[vne165]

The worry is that perhaps we've surpassed critical mass in terms of the % of utter tool joints on the government teat who will never, ever democratically vote for significant change, lest it impact them personally.

And the politicians, (at least the handful left that recognise how screwed up things are), are either too scared to upset all the tool joints, or hamstrung along party lines. Meanwhile things like GA just fracture and fall apart. Eventually no one will care because no one will remember what it used to be like.

Chaos reigns and general aviation will complete it's transition to a law enforcement tool and plaything for the elite. I despair about how to improve things.

[zzodr]

You are conducting a flight from A to B. Fuel required is X.
Baggage consists entirely of CASA Regs.

Which set of documents must you move to the front seat from the baggage compartment to avoid exceeding the AFT limit?

a) CAR
b) CAO
c) CASR
d) MTOW is exceeded.

[vne165]

I still think (and did suggest offline to someone who frequents these pages regularly, and who might have access to the resources to do this) that a set up picture showing the pile of regulations from 1980 and then from the present day next to a light aircraft might elicit some news column inches, if accompanied with an explanatory article.
A picture tells a thousand words.

[MKF]

A few months back I ordered up the CPL Exam Materials as listed from the CASA Website (the Airservices List) casa.gov.au/standard-page/cpl-exams. The estimated shipping weight from Airservices (excluding CASR) was something like 16 or 17KG

[Global Aviator]

Originally Posted by zzodr

You are conducting a flight from A to B. Fuel required is X.
Baggage consists entirely of CASA Regs.

Which set of documents must you move to the front seat from the baggage compartment to avoid exceeding the AFT limit?

a) CAR
b) CAO
c) CASR
d) MTOW is exceeded.

Or relevant now -

e) Should I buy the iPad with max memory........
f) Do I actually need 2 iPads?