Recce

What the AAC is trying to say, and it is worth noting that it does officially represent every group involved in the GA sector of the industry from second-level airlines flying F28 jets right through to the AUF and their fledgling ultralights, is that it has had enough of financing one of the Government’s largest departments when it itself uses little and wants even less of what that department has built over the past few decades. The massive international airports, control towers at relatively quiet rural aerodromes and associated airways systems are primarily there for RPT airline operations, not the private flyer, yet he or she is about to be asked once again to pay a little more for a department that is considered by all (including many who work in it) to be relatively inefficient.

Inefficiency is of course a part and parcel of the Public Service regime. Recent Parliamentary Reports into inefficiencies in numerous Government departments have all revealed substantial levels of work and resources wastage that simply would be untenable in a competitive environment. What the DofA requires is a major shake-up in its overall operation, an independent investigation into its work and management practices as suggested by Dick Smith so long ago and endorsed to some extent in the 1984 Bosch Report into cost recovery. The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Expenditures has also suggested likewise and this review we note is currently sitting on phase two of evaluating the more than 800 submissions detailing the friction that exists between industry and the Department.

We note that some of the suggestions for making change in the Bosch Report are nowadays glossed over when the Department mentions cost recovery while the revenue-gaining sectors of the Report are gladly embraced. The Minister for Aviation, Mr Peter Morris, quotes a projected shortfall of around $171m in 85/86, that is $171 m that the taxpayer has to fund to keep us all flying in Australia. It would gain the Minister more credibility if perhaps he cited that the aviation industry contributes more than $470m a year to the Government coffers via fuel taxes and that the vast majority of his empire exists solely for the purpose of conducting commercially oriented air transportation services for the RPT and charter operators of Australia. What the smaller operators, and the private flyer, via AOPA, are nowadays saying is that the Department itself should begin to take efficiency seriously before there is no General Aviation to cost recover from.

The Bosch Report cited that a reduction in costs is an essential element in any plan to achieve full cost recovery. To quote: “It is especially important to pay particular attention to costs when the Government is a monopoly supplier of services. The absence of alternative suppliers removes the discipline of competition which can act as a major incentive to keep costs down. ” The Prime Minister and the Treasurer have both in recent months extolled us to increase productivity yet their own bureaucracy remains a maze of entrenched inefficiency for which we must all pay ever-increasing dues.

The Bosch Report cited many areas where funds could be more efficiently utilised. The Flying Unit, with its three F28 jets, is perhaps an excellent example of overkill. Are three large F28s really necessary? Particularly when the DofA disposes that barely over a third of their total flying hours are dedicated to the role for which they were acquired – airways calibration and flight survey duties. Just how necessary, in real terms, are the six propjet Gulfstream 1 000s and six Bonanzas? Would it not be more efficient to contract from industry some of these capabilities? Mr Henry Bosch recommended this but all that has since emanated from the Department is a stony silence on such matters. There was a move to trade one of the under-utilised F28s in on a small Citation-type jet last year but this has apparently come to nothing. The Report cited numerous areas where money could be saved by utilising outside leasing of private resources yet to our knowledge not one has been further evaluated. In fact the Department went so far as to suggest that safety might be compromised if airport grass-cutting operations were given over to private industry. As you see the old ‘safety’ bogeyman, which is conveniently rolled out to stonewall any positive change that might be suggested by outsiders also extends to ground-based operations as well as those in the air-amazing.

The Bosch Report listed cost saving functions too numerous to list here though the only primary ones to be apparently accepted were the targets to cut personnel strength and to reduce the DofA budget by 2% per annum in real terms. The fact that many consider savings in the double-figure class could be achieved through instituting the hard-hitting recommendations of an independent investigation into the operation of the DofA is consistently ignored by the Minister and his bureaucrats. You don’t have to go far in Australian aviation to learn of a myriad of government-imposed inefficiencies that are mirrored in the plethora of ridiculous dispensations that nowadays exist to try and keep a hopelessly outdated regulatory system working. If the regulations under which we fly are so viable then why are so many dispensations in force as regular procedure to keep the system functioning? If the private pilot is now expected to pick up the bureaucracy’s tab then all we ask is that we get what we pay for.

Perhaps the words of Henry Bosch himself more ably summarise the present situation. “It would appear the current difficulties arise mainly from the continuation of practices inherited from the past. These practices may have been valid when introduced, but may no longer be so. The financial environment in which all governments are operating is changing rapidly to one of greater accountability. This is nowhere more evident than in the DofA. Change is inevitable, and it will be a great challenge to the Department to face it with a positive attitude. If it can do this and manage change successfully, both the Department and the industry it serves will benefit. ”

Whether real world commercial efficiency will ever come to the DofA though is something that remains to be seen.