Interview – Doug Roser

A: I Certainly accept that over the past year they have been the major issues though I think the primary issues at the moment are slightly different.

In my perception, the TAAATS project is off the agenda as I think we have got. that totally under control. From my point of view TAAATS is no longer a major issue. Hughes and Thomson are working very well, they are very competitive and the project is on schedule with offers due to come in on October 4 for a final decision by year end.

In terms of the Safety Tax, we our- selves are now doing a lot of work on what may be an appropriate mix of achieving cost recovery and it certainly would be a mixture of direct user charges. We see that as one way of keeping pressure on us to keep ourselves efficient and its also one way for industry to realise that there is no free lunch.

The other thing that came out of all our deliberations is that when you actually look at who are the beneficiaries and who are the users of the services, it’s not clear cut. Of course the government has already recognised that the public does benefit from our safety services because they have never said that the full cost would be recovered solely from the industry. They are currently picking up half ofit because the current arrangement is that half of the cost, up to $22. 8 million will be met by the taxpayer. So they do recognise that there is a mix there.

The other question related to the issue of staff morale. Certainly the organisation under the rationalisation process was confused by the process of change and I would accept the word demoralised. It is unfortunately always a byproduct of that process of significant change that we went through to make ourselves more efficient, particularly when we were an organisation that was so steeped in public service attitudes. I think the main problem that caused the low morale was that we, as management, really lost contact with our staff. Management did not properly tell staff what they wanted to achieve and the staff was not able to input into the change process and often felt alienated. Certainly since I have been here we have put an incredible amount of effort into improving communications with our staff, more consultation with the staff associations and I think that has now been recognised. It doesn’t mean to say that we won’t have some issues where staff won’t be happy with what we are doing while we won’t always be happy with the approach that staff is taking.

We at least now have got a very open communication process, so we’re overcoming these problems but that will be a continuing issue because we will con- tinue to change as the industry changes and we will have to change also.

I think the other area where we suffered badly was that a great deal of our interface with the industry is through our safety regulations area. Safety regulations comprises only 10% of our staff and about 10% of our budget but they are probably the greater percentage of our interface with the industry. Safety regulations of course was an area where they really became confused because you had a mixture of trying to achieve efficiencies whilst performing a very unique function in terms of safety regulation.

Consequently the people in the field who are the direct interface with the industry became concerned and not clearly seeing their objectives were not certain what their long term objectives were. Industry picked up on that very quickly as our safety reg people are the ones who are directly interfacing with industry every day. So the perception to the public that morale was low with people that were downcast and confused came very quickly and so it was a real problem and I think we recently have picked up our game in those areas.

Q: Is there a fundamental conflict in the concept of the CAA being a GBE and at the same time a regulatory authority? If so, do you accept that you have to make the best of it or do you think it should be presented to government that the concept be reconsidered? I raise this in the suggestion that the new Safety Directorate should somehow be separate from the Authority.

A: From my point of view there is no doubt that we have two very distinct and separate functions and if you look at our Act (of Parliament), our Act is quite clear.

The first role we have is safety regulation and then everything else we do involves providing services and 90% of our effort goes into those services in terms of budget and staff and that is the bit that is cost recovered from industry. Industry pays for that, industry pays for all our services.

In terms of safety regulation we perform that on behalf of the Government and it is a quite different function from services such as ATC, development of infrastructure, the RFFS etc. This is performed as a regulator with the Government directly funding most of that at this point in time and will always fund at least 50% of it. I must say I don’t see a major problem as we keep them very separate and now we’ve structured the safety regarea as a directorate it should even be more defined.

Q: The contentious issue of the Federal Government imposed Safety Tax has yet to be resolved. CAA has till now been fairly strong on lobbying for a tax structure that would without question swiftly put many small GA maintenance firms out of business. What is wrong with the sensible suggestion from AOPA, amongst others, that the revenue be derived via an easy to implement one or two dollar a passenger ticket tax on RPT carriers.

A: Well, as I indicated earlier, we certainly are looking at a different revenue mix. This year we are looking to recover some of those charges and I really think you had better wait and see what the Government comes out and says. The Government is currently considering some suggestions and recommendations from us on the first phase of the recovery of the cost of safety regulations.

Q: What is the time scale there?

A: We’ve had our proposals back and forth to Government and as we are already into our new financial year we need to clarify this as soon as possible. When that will precisely be though is really a matter for the Minister to decide.

Q: Are you happy with the present structure of the CAA or do you have further plans for changes in either the long or short term?

A: One of the things we are doing over the next few months is, as an executive, spend some time looking at where the CAA will be over the next decade and of course the first thing that you think about is TAAATS. This project is going to orient us onto two major centres, Brisbane and Melbourne and I think that will automatically bring with it withitsome sort of restructuring.

Our activities will tend to focus more and more into those two areas. That doesn’t mean to say we won’t have our posts in some of the other States but that’s where we will actually focus.

The other major issue that comes along of course after that is FANS. The Future Air Navigation System relies on a much greater autonomy of the aircraft and I suppose under those circumstances the major navigation system we would have would be the terminal facilities. Consequently in the next decade FANS will probably have an impact on the navigation aid infrastructure throughout Australia.

Just the fact that we’re going to focus our ATC activities and our enroute activities physically into Brisbane and Melbourne, and then with FANS coming along with less reliance on ground based aids, will certainly force us to restructure. Just how I’m not sure, though we are looking at that at the moment.

One of the problems we have got of course is that as we lead up to TAAATS we’ve got to also maintain the old system and train on the new system at the same time, so you need a lot of extra maintenance and operating people to get you over that. But once you get operational you then have a surplus of people because your old system will close down and you’d be operating the new system. So I would see certainly that TAAATS will force us to some form of restructuring.

Q: We’ve touched on the question of staff morale, what plans do you have to stabilize the workforce and will there now be a secure career structure within the CAA and if so, how will this be achieved?

A: We are currently looking at reviewing all of our staffing levels in terms of getting us operational with TAAATS. Remember that TAAATS has been delayed, it was initially to go on line towards the end of 1995, so with the delays we have had I guess we are now looking at the end of 1997.

There’s no doubt we’ll have our hands full in keeping the existing working up to that time so I think there will be certain staff instability up to that point and we will have to look quite closely at how we are going to address all of these issues. After that I think we will have to look at our restructuring and how we are going to staff that. So I think there will be reasonable stability up to TAAATS, but we really have to look at what happens to us after TAAATS, it becomes a whole new ball game then.

Q: The licensing of warbirds. Following the MiG crash and with ever faster and more complex aircraft arriving on the scene do you perhaps see a need for tighter control of their operations or are you satisfied with the present regulations?

A: Well, we are currently in discussion with Australian Warbirds. We certainly see a need to review these regulations given some of the very sophisticated high technology aircraft that are now available throughout the world and we would like to have certified views in this country.

Some of these aircraft now have Mi- rage era technology as you will be well aware, so we are certainly reviewing that with the operators to get their side of the story before changing any of the existing regulations. (An update on the recent Australian Warbirds/CAA forum to address this issue appears on page 26 of this issue. Ed)

Q: Australian and New Zealand cooperation in ATC matters, is there any long term prospect of a merger perhaps?

A: Well we are certainly harmonising with New Zealand as we’re harmonising with the rest of the world. I suppose in the long term, if I can philosophise a little, Isee with the introduction of FANS where the enroute control is quite autonomous to the aircraft. You can see that in the next decade there will be somevery interesting issues in the terms of airspace management throughout the world and I’m not sure how some of that will end up, but I would be surprised if there aren’t commercial pressures to rationalise some of those airspace issues. Therefore, we have to be very careful to harmonise with our neighbours so we can all enjoy the benefits of this rationalisation.

Where it will all end up will of course depend to a great extent on the political issues. That’s very much a matter for the politicians but from a technology viewpoint, and from a straight operational viewpoint, it would be very easy to amalgamate New Zealand and Australian airspace. I think that the whole issue will at the end of the day be driven by international politics.

Q: One criticism of the CAA revolves around the constantly changing regulations. I have heard private pilots in particular comment that they don’t understand all the changes that are occurring. Do you accept that this is a problem and what if anything do you intend to do to stabilise them?

A: The board has just requested a review of our total legislative and regulatory base and the new Safety Directorate has been given a two year time period to do just that. We will put whatever resources into it we have to, we accept that the legislative base in some areas is not as solid or as clear as it should be and we have now got a very high priority programme to get that resolved.

Q: Regarding the strident criticisms by Dick Smith of the new airspace arrangements, how seriously do you view them and what measures are in hand to ensure that he is not proven correct? I refer particularly to airliners operating MTAF procedures under IMC conditions in G airspace.

A: Well, you know we’re well aware that the development and education process on the new ICAO airspace model is a two year process. We have put a lot of effort into the consultative process, Dick was part of that process and he is certainly entitled to his personal view, but certainly the feedback we get from all of those associations that we deal with is that the ICAO model we have is certainly acceptable as the way to go forward.

In regards to the MTAF query. There is an Aviation Regulatory Proposal out on that and we have got an industry meeting schedule already organised for that and industry have been asked to comment precisely on the MTAF procedures. I’ll let the cards fall as they will in terms of that ARP, we have our viewpoint and I guess Dick has his. We are still awaiting feedback from industry and I haven’t (at mid July. Ed) had any feedback on it yet. We are pretty comfortable that we’ve got it right and industry generally supports it, though the ARP will of course clarify this.

Q: I think it would be fair to say that the media has a generally negative attitude towards the CAA because of events such as TAAATS and its aftermath, union statements, ex-employee comments, Dick Smith, etc. Do you see a need for an active communications programme to attempt to reverse this attitude?

A: There’s no doubt that when I took over the CAA last December, that the press had a very negative attitude to us. and we were an easy target and it was easy to get a headline by just bucketing the CAA.

Since then we’ve had a very active campaign to talk to the press, explain to the press what we’re doing and we’ve also got a very active campaign to work closely with the politicians and people at Parliament House so what we are doing is understood and that we fully explain it to them. Consequently we are now not getting anywhere near as much bad press as we used to. Indeed I think that the press comments we’re now getting are coming out quite balanced.

I accepted this job as a very high profile position that will always be subject to close scrutiny, all I ask is that our viewpoint be put and there is a bal- anced report and I must say I’ve been getting that from the media in recent months. But that means we also have to work hard to relate to the media because you know that if we won’t make a comment or don’t put our viewpoint across, the media has to write some- thing, so what we are very accurately doing now is saying ‘here is our posi- tion’ and our experience is that in all cases our position is being accurately put.

The headline is still there but you read through the article and it now at least gives the CAA position and we usually get a balanced viewpoint. The big issue that still concerns me though is the comment through the parliamentary system and I’ve got to make sure I do something to get some balance there. It goes with the territory, the scrutiny and the comments from there.

Q: A half decade ago nobody could have envisaged the CAA or its then departmental equivalent being where it is today, for better or for worse. What, in your opinion, will be the achievements of the CAA in say five years hence? A: Five years hence we would have introduced TAAATS, which is a major technical and engineering infrastructure achievement which will enable us to provide our ATC services, particularly enroute, very efficiently. That will be the first thing.

We will also be well along the way in terms of planning for FANS and we plan to be taking a lead role in our region on the introduction of FANS. I would also believe that we will be more efficient ‘than we are now which will continue our efforts of looking to where we can get cost savings without affecting safety. The other thing I think is by that point in time we will have a very strong and well focused regulator.

The issue of safety in the aviation industry in this country depends on many people, it depends on the operat- ing airlines, it depends on the pilots and it depends on the people who maintain the aircraft, it depends on the people who design and sell aircraft to us and it certainly depends on us as the safety regulator and it depends on the serv- ices we provide.

Fundamental to that I believe is a strong and sensible regulator that regulates the industry strongly and effectively, but doesn’t necessarily stress them in terms of increased costs, so where we will be leading to in terms of safety regulation is to harmonise with international regulators unless there’s very good safety or economic reasons that we do anything differently. So I think in five years we will have a much stronger and focused safety regulator.