Pt II Two Years In The Aviation Hall Of Doom

Because of an attempted cover-up and suppression of information by the Department, the information below took over two years to compile. The general public, and especially the aviation community, owes a great deal to those departmental employees, present and past, who had the courage to send me copies of the relevant so-called “confidential” documents.

All responsible people hate the word “confidential” when it is applied to anything to do with flying operations. Confidentiality in commercial matters is one thing, but there is no room for it in operational matters or where air safety is involved. What everyone concerned with aviation wants is the widest, most open and completely free dissemination and discussion of a// aviation matters. Everyone except the departmental bureaucrats, that is. They thrive on dark secrecy because their power is reduced by open discussion. Everything about operations that is kept secret does two things – it reinforces the power of nonaccountable bureaucrats and it makes flying less safe.

At an early stage, the Darling Harbour helipad was fully approved for all operations by the Department of Aviation.

The evidence shows that, because tremendous personal differences had developed between the Department of Aviation’s Central Office bureaucrats and the NSW Region, the Central Office decided to teach the NSW Office a lesson – “to bring them into line”.

The evidence is that they did this by putting ridiculous restrictions on the operation of the helipad, completely disregarding the economic damage they would do to a struggling industry that had nothing to do with, and was in no way responsible for, the disgraceful infighting within the Department.

The evidence is that they got away with these scandalous activities by throwing up the smokescreen word “safety” when, in fact, their activities clearly resulted in less safety.

They have aggressively prevented, for five years, any discussion of or enquiry into these matters.

Most seriously, the evidence is that both the Secretary, Collin Freeland, and the then Minister, Kim Beazley, not only knew of the above details and had ample evidence that they were true but for some reason were not prepared to see justice done.

In 1978, after constant pressure from the operator of the Sydney-Gosford commuter service, who claimed that his operation would only be viable if he could land in the city, the Darling Harbour site was chosen jointly by the Department of Aviation and the Maritime Services Board.

The following was stated in a letter dated 23 November 1978 from the Director of the NSW Region of the Department to the Chairman of the NSW Planning and Environment Commission –

This site more than meets the helipad requirement promulgated by this Department.

Before this, departmental staff had taken instruments to the site and made necessary measurements and they had also been involved in compiling the tender documents. In addition, both the commuter operator and Channel Ten had made test flights to the site and pronounced it satisfactory.

Channel Ten won the tender and spent over $100,000 developing the site. Everything had been handled and approved by the NSY/ Region of the Depart ment following the correct procedures laid down by the Department itself. Every other helipad in the Sydney Control Zone, like the Gosford commuter pad, had been approved in the same way.

In August 1979, five days before the official opening of the helipad and nine months after the original approval, an examiner of airmen from the Department’s Central Office arrived unannounced at the site. He gave it a quick walkaround inspection and immediately informed a Channel Ten employee that the site was not suitable and would be declared illegal.

The effect this had on the NSW Regional Office can be imagined. In fact, they only learned second-hand from Channel Ten that their Central Office had arbitrarily banned the site without any discussion whatsoever.

There is no space here to cover the dozens of inter-departmental Minutes that started flowing between Central Office and the NSW Region but they make extraordinary reading. In fact, they show a conspiracy developing.

The NSW Director argued desperately that the site was already approved and was perfectly satisfactory while the Central Office kept insisting that he tell Channel Ten that it was not approved and it did not meet departmental requirements.

That was an almost impossible task because Channel Ten, and in fact everyone in the industry, was well aware that not only had the Department taken part in the selection of the site, but also that they had told everyone the site met their requirements. Channel Ten and the other operators also knew that it was a better site than most of the existing fully-approved helipads in the Sydney Control Zone because it was located in an industrial area and therefore did not require overflights of residential areas.

At one stage the NSW Director, the man on the spot, sent a careful, analytical four-page Minute to his Central Office pointing out where they appeared to misinterpret their own requirements and explaining why his own experts, with their practical and detailed local experience, judged the site safer than many that were in existence.

He received a reply largely ignoring his claims and stating inter alia Whilst respecting the contentions put forward in your Minute of 6 November 1979 as having interesting points of view the conclusion cannot be escaped that you are, in effect, advocating the abandonment of standards based on worldwide recommendations and practices. This, it is believed, we must not do.

“Advocating abandonment of standards”. Anyone who has ever tried to get a regulation updated will recognise this type of answer. When you put up a rational and common sense argument, usually to make something safer, the standard, concrete-brained response is that “we cannot abandon the standards”.

The true Central Office bureaucrat never mentions that the “standards” maybe 20 or 30 years out of date and, therefore, quite often totally ridiculous. It is one thing for such bureaucrats to treat ordinary taxpayers, their employers, with this “standards” ploy. But in this case the answer was being given to the Regional Director in NSW – not to some maverick in the industry or ordinary member of the public.

In fact, there is no doubt that the helipad fully complied with the worldwide ICAO recommendations. That being so, then just what were the “Australian standards”? The answer lay in a document called AGA-7 which was written in the days of the old Bell 47 helicopters, over 20 years earlier, and which was so far out of date that none of the helipads in the Sydney Control Zone complied with it1 Yet they all had been ftilly approved by the device of a departmental “dispensation”. Now, the NSW Director realised he had serious problems. His Region had approved the helipad but his Central Office was not going to back down. They never did. They were all-powerful and were not normally accountable to anyone least of all the NSW Director. They would not listen to his arguments. They would shelter behind out-of-date regulations and cry “we can’t abandon the standards” at every move.

Among the quite extraordinary, previously secret, inter-departmental minutes that I have obtained is the gem that follows. It only came to light because of my investigations and no one in the industry has known of its existence until now.

Dated 4 January 1980, it went from the NSW Director to a First Assistant Secretary, Central Office To say the least, I was most disappointed in your reply to my minute of 6 November on the subject of the Sydney helipad at 39 Darling Harbour. What the minute says is that the Secretary, through you as a delegate, has said the helipad does not meet the requirements and as a delegate am now to write to United Telecasters and the Planning and Environment Commission and them so. The Secretary, through another delegate, has already told them it does. This is the first time that we have changed that advice and there is Little doubt in my mind that this factor will be of significance legally, politically and for the media. Before taking the step, therefore, asked by telephone to make sure that the Secretary and the Deputy Secretary were fully advised and are aware of the possible implications. I told him on the telephone what I believed these would be, including evidence that would have to be given under oath during legal proceedings. “Under oath during legal proceedings” was a phrase, the implications of which should have been pretty clear to the Central Office, which reacted accordingly by following their well-tried precedents.

They did not admit they were wrong (bureaucrats rarely do). They did not even consider Revising and modernising AGA-7: that would never do! They did not give in. They obdurately maintained that the helipad was unsafe and did not meet the requirements. So did they stick to their antiquated, muzzle-loaded guns and ban the helipad? No way! As usual, they simply granted a dispensation that would allow charter and private use of the helipad but would prohibit the Gosford commuter service from using it (which was what the pad was originally intended for). They also prohibited operations at night or where there was a downwind of more than five knots and also restricted all operations to one way in, one way out.

Which is why today any member of the public can go on a joy flight from Daring Harbour or even charter a helicopter and fly in and out all day long (perhaps to Gosford) but no one is allowed to fly in an identical helicopter from Gosford by the commuter service. In fact, because of this incredible ruling the Gosford service has long since closed down, sacking all its staff; the helicopters are in mothballs; and a fortune has been lost.

I have in my possession what appears to be conclusive evidence, in the form of official documents and statements by former and present departmental officers, that the Darling Harbour snafu reflected a personal feud between Central Office officials and the Regional Office officials. There was a kind of “pay-back” attitude in the Central Office ruling. The Law of Defamation-right- by or wrongly precludes public disclosure of much that I know. I would not, however, hesitate to put my evidence before any kind of enquiry.

My essential point in this: what happened with Darling Harbour had nothing to do with safety. It had everything to do with feuding within the Department The story illustrates the enormous power these bureaucrats have, for without any discussion with the industry at all, without any canvassing of opinions. without any accountability, they autocratically placed restrictions that would de, and did, enormous financial damage, businesses closed down, people were put out of work.

There have been some extraordinary side-lights on Darling Harbour. For example, at one stage the Central Office maintained that they could not allow unrestricted use of the helipad because it was not possible to do a forced landing when approaching from the south.

Upon hearing this the chief pilot of Channel Ten immediately put a helicopter into the air and demonstrated, by cutting the engine at every position on the Southern approach, that safe forced landings were easily performed. In other words, he indicated to the Manadarins of the Molonglo what he thought of their quaintly impractical mental processes.

They were not amused! Without consultation, or any discussion whatever. one of them blandly noted in an inter-departmental minute dated 21 December 1979. –

It is not a difficult task for an experienced pilot, full in the knowledge that an emergency is about to be simulated, to demonstrate that an emergency can be adequately coped with.

The egregious fatuity of this comment will delight the hearts of all pilots, who are full in the knowledge” that they will have to cope with simulated emergencies every time they undergo their regular, periodic flight tests! You cannot hold the lowest form of licence to fly solo until you satisfy an examiner or senior instructor during simulated emergencies.

And at another time, the Central Office bureaucrats suddenly imposed on the helipad a restriction that they had never placed on any other in Australia. They insisted that every operation must allow for a safe autorotation in the event of an engine failure. This was a clear example of the absurd lengths they had to go to in attempting to justify their original decision to ban the helipad because not even the Central Office-approved helipad on the Yarra bank in Melbourne could comply with this requirement! This extraordinarily biased treatment did not worry them in the slightest and this requirement still uniquely exists on the Darling Harbour site-even though it cannot be complied with as it is obviously not possible to do a safe autorotation into Sydney Harbour with a non-float-equipped aircraft.

By 1982 all of the departmental people in the NSW office who had been involved in the helipad issue had retired. A new helicopter specialist, Mr. David Allen, was employed. He was highly qualified and very experienced in practical aviation. After inspecting the site and flying the approaches, he requested Central Office remove the restrictions because, in his professional opinion, the helipad was satisfactory The bureaucrats summarily rejected his proposal, without any discussion without any inspection. They simply wrote back and said he was wrong By 1984, when over 15,000 movements had taken place from the pad, an industry survey was done which showed that every pilot who used it regularly. many with over 10,000 hours flying experience, believed that it was perfectly safe and also suitable for night operations. The Central Office simply ignored this survey they did not even bother to answer it or comment on it in any way The position can be summarised thus. The NSW Region originally approved the site. Three years later its new departmental helicopter specialist approved it. After four years and 15,000 movements, every pilot who regularly used the site said it was satisfactory and still the Central Office bureaucrats steadfastly refused even to allow any discussion on the issue. Where, other than perhaps in the Soviet Union, could such a situation exist? Let us assume for a moment that the people in Central Office genuinely thought their NSW counterparts had made a mistake. Then, as a matter of elementary fairness, not to mention safety and the importance of resolving a professional difference in a thoroughly professional way, would the Central Office not have decided, as a matter of course, to call a meeting of all the affected people so as to explain the reasons for their decision and to resolve the mat ter? No way! Nothing happened. There has never been any meaningful discussion -only flat edicts from Central Office.

This is an example of what i was to find again and again a total lack of accountability for anything. They acted, and still act, with contemptuous disregard for the very people they were being paid to serve – including people who were going broke and losing their jobs Significantly, the legal action the NSW Director was worried about did not eventuate. The real reason is instructive. Everyone interested in aviation knows that it is a very brave organisation indeed that will take on the Department because of their unlimited autocratic power for intimidation For example, Channel Ten’s helipad at North Ryde did not comply with the regulations and, therefore, was operating under a dispensation that could easily and arbitrarily be removed.

In addition, as I have already made clear, the bureaucracy always has at hand the weapon of “safety” which it brandishes without scruple when it wishes to bamboozle and control the Minister, the Secretary, the Cabinet and even the whole Parliament, while if they were to update the regulations the bureaucrats would lose their highly prized power to give and withdraw dispensations.

Over a year ago now I went through every detail of this file, including the allegations and evidence I cannot discuss here, with the Secretary of the Department, Collin Freeland, and with the then Minister, Kim Beazley – over four long hours with each of them.

They were obviously quite amazed at what I revealed. At the very least I expected they would institute a full and open inquiry into the allegations I was making.

But they didn’t and the only useful recommendation from the Secretary was that I could try the Ombudsman.

The Secretary was obviously not going to have an open inquiry. His senior bureaucrats would have vetoed that. He did get his inspectors to check out my claim that not one helipad in the control zone complied with the regulations. They measured each one and confirmed this to him. He also announced the appointment of an industry/departmental committee to review the requirements for helicopter landing areas.

Interestingly, the terms of reference for this review did not include any reference to Darling Harbour. The industry was not allowed to nominate its own representatives and the committee were secretly hand-picked by the bureaucrats. They were all people with no involvement in the Darling Harbour issue. They were even told that Darling Harbour was not to be discussed. Once again, everything was neatly covered up.

In November 1984 a meeting was held in Sydney of over 50 helicopter pilots who have been affected by the Darling Harbour fiasco. They unanimously passed a motion calling on the then Minister to immediately institute an open inquiry into this important issue.

If this enquiry ever takes place, and surely common justice says it must, and when it confirms that the NSW Region of the Department approved the site, then fair compensation must be paid to those affected for the losses incurred when this approval was arbitrarily removed after an enormous amount of money was spent. Also, immediate disciplinary action should be initiated against those responsible for such an extraordinary abuse of power.

After all, this is what would happen in private enterprise if a branch manager authorised expenditure that was later found to be wrong. Why should the Department of Aviation be any less accountable under the law? FOOTNOTE: In an article in the National Times of 21 December 1984, Kim Beazley dismissed the evidence that restrictions had been placed on Darling Harbour because of a personal feud between his officers. He claimed that two subsequent assessments of the site came to similar conclusions. However, he failed to make it clear that both of these assessments were made by bureaucrats from the same office that placed the restrictions on in the first place! DON’T RISK FLYING IN OTHER COUNTRIES Let us examine the towering presumption of Australia in setting its own certification standards.

It is often claimed- especially by the bureaucrats that we have “higher’ aircraft certification standards here. This empty boast carries the implication that it means far higher safety.

This claim is untrue. In truth, there is good evidence that Australian certification standards have the horrifying long-term effect of degrading safety here in comparison with the rest of the world. The principal and most apparent reason is that our obviously different standard is so costly to comply with, for no real increase in safety, that quite often all it does is prevent modern aircraft from entering the country, thus leaving us with machines which are old, out of date and less safe.

To concoct and enforce our own standards means employing dozens of aeronautical engineers with high salaries.

West Germany, with a far higher population than Australia, accepts the U. S. FAA standard as their standard. Has any Australian ever heard a warning not to fly in West Germany? The fact is that all non-military aircraft in the Western world are manufactured to the U. S. A. standard.

If these aircraft are not safe then why has our government not warned Australians against travelling on foreign aircraft? Why has there never been this warning from the Secretary.

Don’t travel on PanAm, Lufthansa or Swissair – their aircraft are dangerous! The answer is obvious. We allow all of these foreign aircraft to fly into our country and over our homes, to land at our airports, because our government considers them safe.

Of course, our unique Australian ‘standards’ keep hundreds of highly paid bureaucrats entrenched in jobs. So, not unnaturally, they justify our need for them – in the interest of ‘safety’ of course.

Australia has a very small percentage of the world’s aircraft. It is, therefore, patently obvious that other countries are not going to make aircraft to our standards; we are too small a market for manufacturers to bother about.

We know this perfectly well. That is why our standard usually differs only in minor and quite pedantic ways. Of course, some engineers in the Department of Aviation, who have joined the bureaucracy, will rationalise their role in claiming the need for our very own. unique to Australian, standards.

I know it all: I went through it all at another time – with the humble CB radio. The electronic and radio industry had an enormous problem with engineers who had to justify their own existence. Japan was making huge quantities of CBS for the U. S. market – tens of millions of them. The Australian market could never purchase more than 1% of these.

The engineers and top bureaucrats in the then PMG Radio Branch advised their Minister that we could not possibly accept the U. S. F. C. C. standard, for dozens of quaint reasons. One was that the U. S. sets would cause too much interference to TV sets! Another was that they would interfere with Army equipment and therefore be a security risk! Mainly, they thought we should have a ‘higher standard” (to keep up with, and preferably surpass, the Joneses). That, of course, would have meant a different radio for Australia at a vastly higher price.

These Radio Branch bureaucrats in the PMG fought long and hard to make our standard different so they would forever have something to control, to maintain, to inspect, to justify their very existence.

Luckily, we had a top Minister and Secretary who had enough intelligence to grasp the facts, and eventually, the U. S. F. C. C. 40-channel specification was accepted, thus saving the consumer and the country a fortune. None of the terrible results eventuated. Army radios did not jam, TVs kept working. Common sense prevailed.

UNSAFE FOREIGN HELICOPTERS?

Here is another story to show how ridiculous and expensive our special Australian aviation certifications standard can be, and how it results in less safety. It also shows how the bureaucrats will go to extraordinary lengths to justify their existence.

In early 1982 the Sydney Helicopter Rescue Service was negotiating the import of a German MBB, BO 105 twin-engined helicopter into Australia for use in surf rescue work. It was to replace a single-engined Jetranger and ensure far greater safety. The MBB B0 105 is the Mercedes of helicopters with more than 1000 operating worldwide in some 20 countries where they have accumulated over one million flight hours. It is a magnificent machine, made, of course, to the US. FA. A. standards.

But the Department of Aviation would not allow the importation unless the importer covered the cost of sending a four-man technical team to Germany. The Department said.

The main reason for this requirement for a technical team to visit the MBB establishment is to ensure the airworthiness of the type.

The importer, naturally, objected. He was only a small firm just getting going and he believed he was being asked to fund a junket, or as the industry called it, a ‘technical wine tasting, for how could an aircraft that had accumulated one million flight hours and operated in 20 countries not be airworthy? It should be noted that Australia has no helicopter manufacturing industry and that every helicopter flying here is designed to comply with the American F. A. A. Standards.

Letters shot backward and forward at a great rate, all of course, to no avail. There was no real discussion or accountability to the industry. The importer may well have been talking to a brick wall. Anyway, he was told Qantas had to pay for a technical team to go over to inspect the 747 and see if it was airworthy, so he shouldn’t complain.

as So he raked together all the money, some $20,000, to pay the airfares and the wages for the days that the team was travelling.

Luckily, the Department agreed to reduce its requirement from four to three engineers.

After many months of negotiations, the technical team spent 10 days in Germany and finally arrived back with the list of changes that had to be made to the helicopter so it would conform with our high Australian airworthiness standards.

This is what the three major changes were:

1. Supply a container for the flight manual.

2. Put ‘exit’ signs on the doors.

3. Put a wire guard over the light in the luggage locker.

That highly specialised advice cost $20,000 directly paid by the importer, plus, I estimate, another $10,000 which it cost the taxpayer in time spent by the bureaucrats. Say $30,000 in all.

But don’t be fooled, it wasn’t that simple. He still hasn’t (at April “85) got the helicopter approved. At the moment, after two and half years, he is trying to convert the flight manual climb tables from feet per minute to a percentage gradient.

You’ve guessed: another specialised Australian requirement.

And all this time we could have had a twin-engined helicopter here rescuing people in place of a single-engined machine, so we still have less safety. Such a trip is hard to justify, especially by a department that continually claims it is so short of head office staff that it cannot update the regulations. 3 It should also be noted that the requirement for the technical tour has absolutely no properly promulgated legislative basis at all. It actually appears -as an italic note stuck on the end of an AND where it has no legal affect at all. It doesn’t apply to single-engine helicopters, even if they carry twice as many passengers, and no one in the industry knows who wrote it! Also, the policy is not applied without fear or favour’. The twin-engined AS355 French helicopter, the 80 105’s main competitor, was allowed to be imported without a ‘technical visit when there was no rational reason to differentiate between the two types.

BIG BROTHER KNOWS BEST

Can anyone seriously imagine the Department’s four-man technical team checking out the design of the 747 at Seattle to see that it was airworthy? It is almost too “Monty Python’ to believe, but that is what happened. (I wonder if it too required a container for the flight manual?) It may not be well known that the Department demands that Qantas pay the cost to send an inspector if they wish to use any new airport. This is despite the fact that Qantas, whose staff have the necessary expertise, send their own experts to make such inspections anyway.

When it organised a flight to Harare in Zimbabwe, Qantas wanted to use Reunion as an alternate. They inspected the airport and found that a particular runway was satisfactory for their operations, but when the departmental surveyor arrived he took out his measuring instruments and promptly declared that Qantas could not use the airport. It appears that, notwithstanding all the Air France and South Ancan Airways Jumbo jets landing around him, there was some minor measurement that would not meet our high Australian standards. These standards are, of course, different from those accepted internationally by the airlines you and I fly on and we, the taxpayers, foot the bill for this quite extraordinary misuse of power.

When Qantas decided to take passengers on the delivery flight of a 747 from Seattle, the Department of Aviation insisted that one of their people check the runway to be used! The inspector was flown to Seattle and return at Qantas and taxpayers’ expense to approve an airport that dozens of 747s use every day. Qantas had, naturally, used the airport for all of its previous deliveries but as they were not airlifting passengers the Department did not require an inspection.

In Christchurch, if there is a maximum cross-wind on the main runway. Qantas would prefer to use the shorter cross runway into wind for safety reasons. A departmental bureaucrat maintained that it did not meet the Australian regulations because the shoulders were not wide enough. Thus, Qantas are forced to make the potentially more dangerous cross-wind landing on the main runway.

Can you really believe this? – even Qantas, with all of their incredible expertise, are forced to comply with regulations that make their operation less safe. I wonder what the experience of the bureaucrat is who makes this decision.

Far more serious is Amendment 62 of AND 101 which imposes a performance criterion on new models operated by Qantas, Ansett and TAA that is unique in the world.

In fact, the requirement was originally proposed in the U. S. A. but, because the F. A. A. must be able to show a good cost/benefit relationship for any new rule, and because they had to justify it to an independent panel, it was not accepted.

In Australia, where the Department operates under no such constraints, they just imposed the rule. It means the Australian airlines can be forced to take off with a reduced load compared with their competitors, an economic penalty for an infinitesimal increase in safety – and we pay for this. The point I make is that this requirement has been imposed by a department without fair consultation with the industry. It has been arbitrarily imposed without any agreement – let alone frank, open discussion.

To be sure, there have been lots of meetings; but as one Qantas executive said to me: Have you ever tried to change a person’s belief in a religious dogma? What say has the public had on this issue? Surely if such an unusual and costly requirement is to be forced on Australian airlines, Australians should have a say. The public – those in particular who travel by air – have no say whatsoever: they are never even told that such things happen. This ruling came from a senior bureaucrat who answers to no one other than his own pre-fixed ideas. I describe it as utter, total arrogance. Look at it this way. If these bureaucrats were even slightly genuinely interested in the safety of the travelling public, should they not publicly warn people of the lower safety levels they risk by travelling in overseas-registered aircraft? Including those that depart from our own airports? Recently a senior airline executive told me that he was sick and tired of finding that an ex-employee, who had resigned because he was not capable of moving into a higher position, would, within a few years of joining the Department, come back to be a “lord and master’ arbitrarily making rules which affected the airline’s highly qualified and skilled engineers – all of whom had far more experience.

Yes, 30 years ago, we were in the forefront of safety, we could come up with standards that the world would follow.

Today, this is just not possible, we come up with minute, pedantic changes that are costly just to us, and the whole world leaves us behind.

Let it not be imagined that Qantas is big enough to get a fair hearing from the Department of Aviation bureaucrats.

I have found that senior management in Qantas are just as intimidated by the power of the bureaucracy as the smallest operator.

Why else would they be accepting departmental rulings to which they are opposed, may make them less competitive, and which they believe that they have not been able to have fairly and impartially reviewed? A senior executive of Qantas recently told me that the overseas inspections of airports by Department engineers were a shocking waste of public money. However, he would not want to rock the boat” by publicly stating this.

Many other aviation executives, after bitterly complaining about the Department, quickly add that they would not like any public disclosure of their dissatisfaction. One said- We can’t openly criticise as they can easily retaliate. Obstructionism can be easily buried. A file can be lost. You can’t identify any one person; but it can and does happen.

However, others are more forward. In a recent address to the Department of Aviation, the general manager of Air Queensland stated- I am sure that the Minister would have the support of the total aviation industry if he directed the Department to disband its present legislation and introduce something that is more readable, totally enforceable, and not an unreasonable cost burden to the industry. A good starting point would be the adoption of either the American or European system. After all, who do we think we are that we must have our own special cumbersome, confusing, and costly legislation when nations many times our size subscribe to either the American FAR or the European JAR? It is all very well for the Department to pick the eyes out of that legislation and to embellish it with a few Australianism but it is grossly unfair that the flexibility and cost effectiveness of those systems is not commensurately allowed to the Australian industry.

It is obvious from the above evidence that our own unique standard is an extremely costly extravagance that often means, in practice, we end up with less safety.

INTIMIDATION – THE SUBTLE TECHNIQUE If you ask business leaders in the aviation industry whether they feel in any way intimidated by the bureaucracy, the answer will most often be ‘no”. If you ask the same people if they would be prepared publicly to state their dissatisfaction with those same bureaucrats the answer will most probably be the same ‘no’.

It is rather like asking a nightclub owner to state publicly that he was intimidated by those who offered him protection! Kim Beazley, when he was Minister, told me that whereas he received many complaints about ‘issues’ – people pushing their own barrows for their own benefit and the like he rarely (other than from myself) received general complaints about his departmental staff and the way they controlled the industry.

I believe this can only be because people feel intimidated: they feel if they publicly complain or ‘stir in any way then the bureaucrats, with their immense power, will wreak swift revenge. Dispensations may not be given, approvals may be delayed, paperwork ‘lost’.

Therefore, as industry people will rarely admit to being intimidated, whether from pride or fear of further intimidation, I give the following examples, on the bases of which the readers can make up their own minds.

Example 1-Dick Smith’s Helipad At my original meeting in Canberra in December 1982 with the Deputy Secretary, Jim Schofield, I mentioned that most helicopter operators would not publicly complain about the shocking state of the regulations because they felt they might be discriminated against. As every helicopter operator needed a host of dispensations (favours!) to earn a living, it was a real and genuine fear.

I was told very firmly and definitely that this did not, and would never, happen as the departmental officers who had been delegated to give dispensations only considered safety issues and they would never abuse the power they had.

I was prepared to believe this. However, my suspicions were soon raised. My own day-night helipad at my home had been given a dispensation as it did not comply with the regulations. (As I have mentioned before, no helipads in the Sydney Control Zone complied and all were operating under a dispensation. ) Shortly after my campaign to update the regulations started in earnest my office received a telephone call from the helicopter specialist in the NSW Office to say that they had been instructed by Central Office to remove the dispensation for night landings at my home helipad.

My secretary asked why this was so and was told: I can’t say, but once you tell Dick he will know what is going on.

I was overseas at the time. However, when I returned I received a letter from the NSW Office, the salient part of which was: Central Office has advised that approval cannot be granted as the helipad is deficient in both size and number of take-off/approach paths and therefore unsuitable for safe operations at night.

Note carefully that the letter quotes “Central Office’ as making the decision whereas the NSW Office is fully delegated by the Secretary to give or remove dispensations on helipads. Also note that “safety’ is used as the emotive word to arbitrarily ban the pad.

Needless to say, there was no open discussion before the decision was made. I do not know to this day on whose instructions this autocratic decision was made. It was all done in secret.

There was no way I was going to be intimidated by such actions even though I was given the impression that if I stopped rocking the boat my dispensation would be restored. Fortunately, I was not earning my living from aviation so the decision did not economically affect me.

I immediately wrote a letter to the Deputy Secretary, Jim Schofield, not crawling for a favour and offering not to ‘stir’ but simply pointing out what had happened. I wrote – After obtaining approval for my home helipad to be used for night operations and after installing an expensive glide slope indicator as a required additional condition, I have now been told that I can not use the pad. This is despite the fact that I have been using it with absolutely no problems for the past five months.

If you remember our very first meeting in your office I explained that most helicopter operators would not approach your Department with their complaints for fear of being discriminated against when the many personal dispensations to operate a helicopter are required. My case rests Sure enough; soon afterwards I received a phone call from the NSW Office stating that they had been instructed by their Central Office to restore the dispensation. I have been using the pad ever since.

Example 2- Citation In Part I of this story (March issue), there is an account of the horrifying secrecy and lack of accountability involved in the single-pilot Citation issue. When Rex Aviation sent me copies of the documents they also wrote me a letter that stated in part: We would respectfully request that you regard the information supplied as ‘confidential’ at this stage, as we would not like any of this publicly released, as it may tend to prejudice our case.

They later told me that I could publicly use the information. However, they were still fearful that there would be repercussions.

It is scarcely believable – a large Australian company attempting to gain its democratic rights of full and open discussion on an issue, but too scared to have its beliefs stated publicly for fear of ‘prejudicing their case’! Example 3 – Ansett When I did the initial research for the documentary on the Bass Strait incident I spoke to a number of senior executives on the operational side in Ansett. They were, without exception, extremely vocal about the incompetence of the Department in relation to the attempted rescue.

They commended the idea of making the documentary and said that as it was such an important safety issue they would cooperate in every way possible, including interviews with those involved.

In spite of this, just before the Four Corners team left Sydney for Melbourne to commence the filming I received an urgent phone call from a senior Ansett executive.

He told me that Ansett had reconsidered their position and would not be cooperating. He said: We don’t believe it would be sensible for us to take part as we have a good relationship with the Department.

Those who have seen the resultant Four Corners award-winning show ‘Search Without Rescue’ will notice that there are no interviews or comments from anyone within the airline industry.

In fact, we were not even allowed to interview the pilot of the Ansett aircraft who found and then held over the drowning man. And this was despite the fact that he had a valuable story to tell and he fold me that he would be happy to tell it.

It was obvious that Ansett were so completely intimidated that they were just not game to risk putting the Department off-side even though it was an important safety issue where full and open disclosure could only do good. Example 4 – Industry/Department Committees Occasionally, and normally only because of constant pressure on the Minister or Secretary, an industry/departmental committee is formed to look into a particular issue.

The way that the industry members are normally hand-picked by the Department (not nominated by the industry) allows for and results in intimidation of anyone who ‘rocks the boat’ or ‘stirs”. Here are two examples: For over ten years the industry operators at Bankstown Airport had been attempting to gain a number of special IFR approach paths. Two of the most vocal people on departmental inaction and apparent incompetence on this issue were Class I instrument-rated, Class I instructors and highly experienced IFR pilots. They had both spent a tremendous amount of time campaigning to have the much-needed changes made. Each of them was the head of an approved flying school. Each of them was “approved” by the Department to conduct tests and renewals on behalf of the Department. Both of them had actually trained and tested for instrument ratings and twin-engined endorsements, pilots who are now departmental examiners of airmen.

Eventually, a meeting was held at Bankstown Airport and the Department agreed to allow a joint industry/departmental committee to be formed to look into the matter. At that meeting, in the presence of some twenty senior pilots and operators, a senior departmental official made one extraordinary condition on which the Department would allow the joint committee to be set up. It was- That neither of the two senior operators who had brought things to a head should represent the industry on the joint committee! No reason was given for this impertinent condition. Everyone present knew the reason; the two concerned were regarded as ‘stirrers’ who had shown scant deference to bureaucrats in years gone by, and had emerged victorious from innumerable battles over safety and operational matters with the Department. The meeting hesitated only a moment, and then elected both men to the committee as industry representatives.

The other example concerns the committee set up to look into the AGA-7 helicopter landing areas after my submission to the Secretary in relation to the Darling Harbour helipad The helicopter industry in Australia was invited to Canberra to discuss this and other issues and, they thought, to elect the industry representatives for the committee.

Upon arriving at the meeting they found that the senior bureaucrats had already secretly selected the three industry members, it was a “fait accompli” – no discussion was allowed. Naturally, many industry people were unhappy with such treatment. However, on this occasion, no one was prepared to ‘rock the boat’ and complain publicly.

It goes without saying that the three representatives selected had never written to complain about the outdated AGA-7 specifications and they were all people who required fair treatment from the Department to earn their livelihoods.

I was later told that the Department had hand-picked the industry representatives so that: STIRRERS like Bob Wilson and Dick Smith could not get elected by the industry.

Bob Wilson is one of the most experienced helicopter pilots/managers in Australia with over 12,000 hours of flight time. As he had been very closely involved in the operations of many pads, including Darling Harbour, they could not have had a better person for the committee.

Example 5 – Over the Bridge at 500 Feet The following report is written by John Barnao, managing director of Helicopter Charter Pty Ltd.

Approximately three years ago, in December 1981, I started a helicopter freight delivery service from the Hunter Valley to Sydney.

During inclement weather, the only way I could operate my service into Darling Harbour was by obtaining approval to transit Sydney Harbour and fly over the Harbour Bridge at 500 feet. But there was no way the Department would give me a dispensation to do this. I would sit on the ground at Darling Harbour watching other helicopters, from the media’s to Dick Smith’s, flying in and out when I was not allowed to operate.

I discussed and argued the point with the Department of Aviation, air traffic controllers, and head office, to no avail. They would not grant my company’s helicopters the right to cross over the bridge at 500 feet even though many others had a dispensation to do this. The reply was always- ‘We cannot reduce the standards. ” It took me three long years of constant battle to win and I was later told that it was because I was a stirrer that I wasn’t originally given a dispensation. In fact, I believe that this can be the only explanation.

I should also mention that, because they will not let me land at Darling Harbour at night, I have been forced to land at Channel Ten’s helipad, and this is a thousand times less safe.

So there it is. “Stir” a bit or be outspoken, no matter how well-intended, and the bureaucrats will take quick action. As I said to Jim Schofield- My case rests

Example 6 – AVIAC When he was Minister for Aviation, Kim Beazley said to me that he would institute a ‘committee of review’ into the Department if the members of the AVIAC (Aviation Industry Advisory Council) requested it. (AVIAC consists of the heads of industry associations and commercial airlines. ) I immediately phoned each member and found almost unanimously (Peter Patroni of AOPA was one notable exception) that the members would not public- ly support any type of review into the Department. The extraordinary thing is that these same councillors represent companies and organisations which have given me much of the damning information for this book, and it is the people they are representing who are constantly telling me how desperately a review is required.

One AVIAC member, the extremely well-known head of a large organisation, did say that he would support a call for a review as long as the Minister agreed, as he did not wish to get him off-side.

of course, it is highly probable that the AVIAC members are not in any way intimidated – they just genuinely believe an independent review is not necessary because in their personal capacities, like myself, they enjoy good relations with the Department and obtain every concession they need.

In the September Edition of Australian Aviation We Conclude the Serialisation of Dick Smith’s Book, Two Years in the Aviation Hall of Doom. Don’t Miss It!

Readers are reminded that this series is reprinted from the book of the same name. “Two Years in the Aviation Hall of Doom”, by Dick Smith, is available for only $3. 00 at McGills (Melbourne), Dymocks (Sydney) and Moorabbin Aircraft Spares outlets throughout Australia. You may also receive the book by mail by sending $3. 00 directly to ACORP, PO Box 681, North Sydney, 2060.