Aviation Briefs

As part of a comprehensive range of reforms, Senator Evans has also announced the establishment of the Civil Aviation Authority, an organisation which will ultimately replace the aviation components of the Department of Transport and Communications while remaining separate from the Bureau of Air Safety Investigation.

Mr McNamara’s committee has already established an office in Adelaide and has appointed a full-time administrator to assist it in its functions. The preferences of an Adelaide office, according to Mr McNamara, are that, first, all members of the Committee happen to live in Adelaide, and, secondly, the Committee considered it advantageous to be able to conduct much of its work away from Canberra! The Committee is coordinating its work with Mr R C (Jerry) O’Day, First Assistant Secretary (Flight Standards Division), Central Office of the Department; it has also consulted with a similar committee established in New Zealand, which has advanced some way into the review of aviation regulations in that country and has looked in some detail at Canada’s aviation laws which are regarded in some quarters as approaching the ideal.

Mr McNamara acknowledged that air safety regulation in Australia is deficient, specifically in that the rules comprised in Air Navigation Regulations, Orders, AIPs etc. are frequently difficult for the industry to precisely ascertain and, in respect to many rules, are simply difficult to find. The Committee sees as its principal aim the production of a body of aviation laws that are more precise and accessible than that presently existing as well as minimising within those laws the scope of discretions presently vested in Departmental delegates.

To achieve those objectives the Committee’s first step is to identify the specific areas in the regulations that are the cause of continuing problems, both for the industry and the Department. In that regard, the Committee intends to study the experiences of other foreign systems at first-hand if Commonwealth Government funding can be obtained.

Additionally the Committee will, of necessity, work closely with the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department as well as the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel.

Mr McNamara emphasised however, that the Committee’s objectives are unlikely to be fully realised without input from the aviation industry. A considerable number of individuals and organisations have already been invited to make submissions but the Committee is anxious to receive submissions from a broad range of organisations and the public generally.

The Committee’s timetable will see submissions received by the end of May 1988. The process of detailed analysis of submissions will then begin leading finally to the Committee’s formulation of proposals for change. The Committee aims to be able to provide the Minister with a detailed report by January/ February of 1989.

In response to Mr McNamara’s invitation, the ALAA has established a committee to assemble and forward submissions to his committee on behalf of the Association. The ALAA Committee is chaired by Mr Brian Kinsella, a Sydney lawyer and a member of the New South Wales Branch Committee and it includes members with interests in General Aviation, Airlines and the Department.

Significantly, the ALAA is the first aviation association in Australia to be addressed by Mr McNamara on the work and objectives of his Committee and he said that the Association’s input is keenly sought.

While it is clear that any proposals for reform will not countenance any reduction in the standards of air safety presently enjoyed in Australia, it is also clear that safety and, more particularly, the ‘standard’ of safety to be preserved in the industry is a matter that will exercise much of the Committee’s time and study.

The definition of uniform safety standards in Australia is unarguably a function of the Commonwealth Parliament; the difficulty, however, that lurks behind that simple proposition is that of balancing, on the one hand, the value of the lives of those directly affected by air safety (principally the flying public) as against, on the other hand, the financial cost Australians are prepared to pay in order to preserve those values.

Naturally enough the opinions frequently expressed on that issue are as diverse as those that attend any other aviation debate. They range from the ‘leave well enough alone’ to the proposition that the Wright brothers might have discovered the sound barrier had governments stayed out of the industry! Within the substantial middle ground, however, the majority of operators, pilots, engineers, public administrators and insurers recognise that it is simply not possible to achieve any viable standard of air safety in the absence of mandatory minimum requirements. The serious argument began when the attempt is made to express these minimum requirements in written terms capable of applying equitably to all those they affect; and while some insist that the rules cannot be all things to every interested party, there are yet many more who continue to call for government to remove what they describe as a clutter of inefficient regulations accumulated like cobwebs over the years. Where the consensus lies between those views, if indeed a consensus is achievable, is a difficult place to find but there cannot be any doubt that solutions to the many and varied challenges now facing the industry are impossible in the absence of informed and active debate.

In that context the airline or helicopter pilot, the LAME and the Air Traffic Controller have as much to contribute to the debate as the lawyer, the operator and the concerned administrator. The Aviation Regulatory Review Committee is not the first, nor does it provide the last, venue at which interested persons can express their opinions; but it may present one of those precious few opportunities the industry as a whole gets to put and argue its different points of view in a sober environment.

The ALAA applauds establishing the Aviation Regulatory Review Committee and wishes it success in its endeavours.

It is sincerely hoped that the end product will indeed see more rationalism and objectivity returned to aviation regulations and not just the making of more rules for the sake of appearances.