CASA Chair of the Board responds to post 1274
 

Dear Mr Buckley



I refer to your latest correspondence of 2 November 2020 addressed to Mr Mathews, Chair of the CASA Board.



As there is no new information provided, CASA is satisfied that your request falls within the allegations made to the Commonwealth Ombudsman, noting the review is currently underway. The outcome of the review will inform next steps.



Yours sincerely



Colin McLachlan

Follow up to post 1115
 

If you refer to post 1115 you will see my Freedom Of Information Request that I made. I had written to a Member of the Board hoping that integrity may prevail. I was concerned that my correspondence may have been thwarted by Shane Carmody. To confirm my fears I made an FOI request and have received the response which is attached. Sure enough, the email to the Board Member was intercepted and Mr. Carmody intervened. One of the problems i guess when the CEO also sits on the Board.He has obviously been following this, so a big hello and welcome to Mr. Carmody. If you are not signed up to Pprune unfortunately you won't be able to open it. For those that are members, it makes an interesting read.

It's an uphill battle but the exercise is good for me.

CASA love a robust story
 

Mr Carmody, and former DAS/CEO’s before him, have periodically received weekly briefings outlining/highlighting key comments made about them or CASA on social media or websites such as Pprune. This normally happens when there is something ‘big’ going on that involves CASA. I can assure you that this is correct. In former days when the Screaming Skull was DAS he would often become very angry at Pprune comments, and so would Hoody, but Hoody would often have a silent chuckle behind the scenes.

Glen, if you have their attention then that is good. They wouldn’t read your posts if they felt the comments weren’t relevant or potentially threatening to their gravy train. They are adverse to spotlights, which is a common thing among cockroaches. However they won’t be too concerned as one of your bullies recently left CASA and Big Ears leaves later this month. Teflon Aleck will never get a scratch on him, which is a shame because anyone who has intimate knowledge of how the CASA machine operates knows that Aleck is the key piece of the jigsaw that has been there for over a quarter of a century and he is the architect of today’s CASA. Until he ever leaves there will be no change. And even if he leaves he has an understudy in Mr Anastasi of whom he has been mentoring for the good part of 15+ years, so CASA won’t be changing its ways anytime soon, not unless a Royal Commission was formed and the subsequent result was a complete dismantling of the Frankenstein’s monster and AMSA became the new aviation regulatory agency.

Maybe a couple of Snake eyes or GBU's through the windows at CASA will fix the cockroach problem.

Glen, I strongly advise you to get advice and coaching on how to present yourself before the Committee. I have never been before one but I am advised that it may not be as simple as it looks, especially if one of the Senators decides to be hostile towards you and your point of view.

I second Sunfish on getting some training. I wonder if anyone here has a contact that might assist pro-bono? I've been subpoena'd to appear before a Senate subcommittee and there were a number of particularly nasty players whose motives were entirely political and had nothing to do with getting to the truth of the matter in the public interest. I got some coaching beforehand which proved invaluable. Too long ago for my coach to be any use to Glen now, but there must be folks out there who are current on such matters. How can we help?

Seek and ye shall find:
https://www.mediamanoeuvres.com.au/s...ring-training/
https://mediasuccess.com.au/senate-estimates/

planning essential
 

Glen,
Apologies if I am trying to teach you to suck eggs.

When Presenting:
Plan carefully what you will say. Summarise the key message in your first sentence. Describe most important matters briefly and succintly, so as to underscore these. Do not distract your audience with minor matters.

When answering questions:
Take a few seconds to let the import of the question sink in, then answer briefly in a couple of sentences. If the Senator wants more detail, they will ask. There is very limited time so you will want to avoid getting distracted into discussing minor or irrelevant matters.

Have your key messages in point form in large font on a single piece of paper in front of you for reference. You may be asked for further comments or a summary at the end, but don't rely on this.

Obvious presentation techniques often forgotten by interviewees: Always look the Questioner (and the other Senators) in the eye, and speak loudly enough that all can clearly hear you.

Good luck.

SB

Best of luck Glen. Also agree with getting some prep before hand.

I’ve seen Glen on the Ben Morgan show. Not sure he needs this coaching you’re all frothing for as he’s compelling, natural and engaging enough as it is.

He tends to go off on tangents on this forum.

We need more people who go off on tangents and tilt at windmills.

Stand up
Speak up
Shut up
Sit down.

A person might fly a 172 nicely, but you wouldn't throw them into an A380 without training.

A previous CASA DAS was an active and interesting PPRuNe user.

And so was a member of the ‘legal team’. Naughty naughty.

And so were many CASA staff, Regional Managers et al. I don't think they realized most web sites record IP addresses............. :}

Correspondence to each member of the Board of CASA
 

08/11/2020

To the Members of the Board of CASA,


Mr. Anthony Mathews (Chair of the Board of CASA)
Mr. Shane Carmody (Director of Aviation Safety, and CASA CEO)
Mr. Mark Rindfleish
Mr. Michael Bridge
Ms. Donna Hardman
Ms. Elizabeth Hallet
Ms. Marlyn Andre

As you will be aware, I have been given an opportunity to present before the Senate Inquiry into CASA. I am extremely appreciative of this opportunity. As you will be aware I am claiming misfeasance/malfeasance and negligent misstatement against a small group of the CASA Executive Management, including Mr. Shane Carmody, Mr. Jonathan Aleck, Mr. Craig Martin, and Mr. Graeme Crawford

I allege that those personnel acted unlawfully, and breached my rights under Administrative Law, Procedural Fairness, and Natural Justice. They acted vindictively and vexatiously.

Their conduct has resulted in the closure of a number of businesses, associated loss of jobs, and bought enormous damage to my mental health, and caused enormous economic damage to me personally. You will also be aware that I have made multiple attempts over the last two years to meet with the Board, and you have chosen not to afford me that opportunity. As you will appreciate, from my perspective each of you has been complicit in facilitating a cover-up of this matter and clearly failed in your respective roles to ensure the good governance of CASA. I will raise these same allegations against you when presented the opportunity before the Senate Committee.

You will each be aware that similar allegations have been raised against these personnel before, and in fact, their conduct formed the basis of an ABC investigative story aired on the ABC.

Your failure to act ethically and with good intention is a clear failure against CASAs' own published Regulatory Philosophy, and the obligations placed on you when you accepted a position on the Board of CASA.

For clarity, those personnel took three separate and distinct, and deliberate actions.

Stage One- Without any warning at all, and not based on any safety allegations, CASA reversed my business's approval and placed restrictions on the business's ability to trade. That business was called the Australian Pilot Training Alliance (APTA). I emphasize that by CASAs' own admission there were no safety allegations or allegations of regulatory breaches. On multiple occasions and in writing I advised CASA that those restrictions on my business's ability to trade would cost me in excess of $10,000 per week if I were to avoid business closures and redundancies. After 8 months of having those restrictions applied, the business was unable to continue trading and was sold at 5% of its value to ensure the continuing employment of my highly valued personnel. I was dealing not with a matter of law but only a "change of opinion" by Mr. Jonathan Aleck in his role as CASA Executive Manager of Legal, International, and Regulatory Affairs.

Stage Two- Those CASA personnel then advised that I had to transfer my remaining business Melbourne Flight Training (MFT) to the new owners of APTA. The Commonwealth Ombudsman has investigated this matter and clearly found that conduct to be unlawful.

Stage Three- After the failure of APTA and the transfer of my remaining flying school, I managed to obtain employment within the industry whilst continuing to defend my reputation and my position, until CASA sent a direction to my employer that my "continuing employment was untenable based on comments that I was making publicly."

The purpose of this correspondence is to ensure that you are each aware of my allegations and I draw your attention to the following "thread" running on this topic. You will note that it has had over 650,000 views and strong feedback supporting my position. https://www.pprune.org/australia-new...ss-v-casa.html

Whilst I am confident that each of you are fully aware of this thread, I wish to ensure you have been notified and availed with the opportunity to familiarize yourselves with it, as it will form the basis of my "submission".

Yours thankfully, Glen Buckley.

Dear Glen,
I have expressed by cynicism about the current Senate enquiry many times in this forum and others; this is based on the political views of the Chair Senator Susan MacDonald. Her own web site contains this information "She is a member of the Liberal National Party of Queensland and sits with the National Party in federal parliament." The National Party in the Federal Parliament traditionally controls the portfolio containing aviation matters and hence CASA; currently the Minister is the leader of the National Party the Honourable Michael McCormack.

Am I just being silly or is the National Party so badly organised that it will allow a Senator from Queensland to undermine an agency which is the responsibility of their Leader? If everyone reading this thinks so, or believes that Senator MacDonald is just doing some undercover work for Minister McCormack, they underestimate the power of political patronage. Even though, I believe, that Senator MacDonald's father was once the president of the Country Party in Queensland, the Nationals choose whose name is put forward for safe Senate seats and if the honourable lady rocks the boat, they will get rid of her.

My personal (cynical) view is that her endeavour is designed to shore up the outback Qld vote for the Nationals without actually doing anything. (That is not to say that a little win over Angel Flight would consitute not doing anything, but I hope you get the drift)

The truth is that the Minister could institute changes in CASA at any time, however he will not and indeed will appoint a steady-as-she-goes successor to Mr. Carmody, who will do precisely what the Minister wants.

Good luck Glen, but choose your avenues of redress wisely.

Your aye - Mr.Approach

If you want to know what CASA truly stands for then consider what a very senior person in CASA once said;

‘Regulation by Obsfucation’ - self explanatory.

‘Regulation by Accumulation’- travel as much as you can and gain as many frequent flyer points as you can.

’Ask not what you can do for CASA, but what CASA can do for you’ - milk every taxpayer dollar you can out of the place in T/A, expenses, overtime and travel. Bleed the trough dry.

And of course a very well known legal roadstop once said; ‘all aviators are criminals, it’s just that they haven’t all been caught yet’.

Who said these things, and when?