From the Regions

This is supported by the professional training and medevac companies. Achieving this requires highly trained technical, operational and administrative personnel. It is a complex mix of skills that must be managed carefully and is often a seven day a week commitment by the business owners.

Thrown into this mix are the government aviation agencies including CASA, Airservices, ATSB, Office of Transport Security, Office of Airspace Regulation and the Dept of Infrastructure and Transport.

All these entities regularly request responses from industry, sometimes with short deadlines.

What is not commonly appreciated is that Airservices’ entire budget, including a dividend paid to government, is raised from the aviation industry. The large majority of CASA’s finances is also derived directly from industry.

This is on top of the normal company taxes paid by operators into general government revenue.

In short, regional aviation operators have a very real stake in the government agencies with which they interact.

This is not well understood by industry or by the government agencies. Operators pay to be regulated, for all their air traffic management and aviation firefighting services. They pay also directly and indirectly for aviation security services.

Looking at the above it is hard to comprehend how reasonable profit is achieved.

It also goes some way to explaining why regional routes cannot support very low-cost carriers. There is a sense, like the frog in the gradually heated water, that regional aviation is being boiled without realising it.

The truth is that regional aviation can bear no more and must be treated by government like the substantial shareholder it is.

Aviation security policy must be able to adjust security options as threat levels change.

More security measures mean higher costs to operators and, inevitably to the travelling public. If threat levels diminish are there policies in place to enable some security arrangements to be removed? Why are aviation firefighting services managed by Airservices? Overseas these services are often provided by individual airports that achieve commensurate safety levels at lower cost. Are the current arrangements being driven by industrial considerations rather than best practice? In addition has Airservices’ senior management engaged robustly regarding the air traffic controllers’ new certified agreement or has there been a cave-in? The aviation industry will be watching with great interest. It is after all entirely the industry’s money.

Government agencies are powerful entities that can sometimes disconnect from the industries they serve. Governments and their agents exist to serve the taxpayer. This relationship is reinforced at the ballot box. Industries of all types look to governments to be enablers, to add value.

The regional aviation industry is no different and is striving to bring new products to the market. The interior of Australia is still full of opportunity and its role in our productivity, in the prosperity of future generations, must not be thwarted by myriad and complex government agencies living off the efforts of a gradually shrinking number of regional operators.

Australia has a tendency to be over-governed. It is up to the governed to wrest back control and remind regularly our political leaders and their executives that power is derived from the people.

There is a sense, like the frog in the gradually heated water, that regional aviation is being boiled without realising it. The truth is that regional aviation can bear no more.