Casa In The Cross-hairs

“You don’t get to this situation of needing an independent review without the industry getting pretty cynical,” Aerial Agriculture of Australia Association CEO Phil Hurst told Australian Aviation.

“We’ve been through these sort of reviews before, but we have to participate in case this is the one that actually works. The people who don’t turn up, don’t even get listened to. ” To be sure, the industry has turned up. By its January 31 deadline, the panel leading the so-named Aviation Safety and Regulatory Review, or ASSR, had received 250 submissions from the aviation community and interviewed another 100 or so people. A few had positive things to say, according to panel chairman and former Airservices Australia chief David Forsyth. But only a few.

“There’s certainly some frustration in the industry,” he said.

“You wouldn’t say that CASA is the most popular organisation out there.

There are some pretty strong views that the regulator could have better relationships with the industry. ”The review was ordered in November by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development Warren Truss in the wake of a Senate report that criticised CASA and the ATSB’s handling of an investigation into the Pel-Air Westwind ditching off Norfolk Island. Truss also acknowledged widespread disaffection within the aviation industry over the current regulatory regime, especially among smaller operators.

The panel – led by Forsyth and also including Don Spruston, a former Director General of Civil Aviation at Transport Canada and the International Business Aviation Council; and Roger Whitehead, a former head of safety at British Airways, safety advisor to Qantas and former UK Civil Aviation Authority board member – is tasked with taking a broad look at Australia’s aviation safety agencies and how they work together. Most submissions, however, have focused squarely on CASA.

Forsyth said some of the “antipathy” toward the regulator stemmed from past enforcement actions and “personal issues”, but said most submissions to the ASRR panel had been constructive. Indeed, Hurst, who helped prepare the AAAA’s 42-page submissions, said he and others within industry had made a conscious effort to focus on structural problems. “We’re not playing the man whatsoever. We went out of our way to make sure we’re focused on substantive issues. ” The issue most consistently raised in the panel’s sounding of the industry was angst over the pace and direction of CASA’ s long-running regulatory reform program, Forsyth said. Launched about 20 years ago, he noted, “people would like to see it finished one way or another. ” At the same time, the draft regulations that have been released in recent years have failed to win over detractors or produce a sense of closure.

One complaint is that the new rules read like they were written by a legal committee – which, according to Forsyth, they were. “The feeling is that the program is producing very legalistic regulations. Other countries’ regulations are pretty straightforward to read and understand, but the Australian draft is much more difficult to understand, far more wordy, and talks a lot about what you can’t do rather than what you should do. ” Concern over the form of the emerging framework, however, masks deeper concerns – and significant divisions within industry – over the basic direction of the reform effort. Originally launched to bring Australian regulations in line with international standards, the regulatory reform program has been hampered all along by divided and shifting views on which set of standards Australia ought to emulate. Large airlines have generally favoured a European-style ‘outcomes-based’ program that places the onus on operators to design safety systems and procedures, but smaller operators feel such an approach puts an unrealistic burden on already-stretched resources. They favour a more straightforward, prescriptive framework such as that of the United States or New Zealand.

While the draft regulations have been widely criticised for trying to ‘re-invent the wheel,’ there remains no industry consensus over which alternative Australia should embrace. “It’s a difficult decision, and that’s probably why it’s been going on for 20 years,” Forsyth said. “In essence, there are different views from the big end of town and the small end of town. ” This, he continued, made regulatory reform

You don’t get to this situation of needing an independent review without the industry getting pretty cynical.

the most difficult issue facing the panel – and the one that could threaten its May deadline, though Forsyth expressed a measure of confidence. “There are a number of different views within the industry, but what may work to our advantage is that there is probably a bit of regulatory reform fatigue. People want to see an end to it and have it sorted so they know where they stand. That’s a plus. It’s just a matter of finding some consensus. ” Hurst, however, challenged the picture of a divided industry. “I don’t see it at all as a battle within the industry,” he said. “I think all parts of the industry recognise that other parts of the industry have different needs. I don’t see Qantas or Virgin shouting from the rooftops that we should have the same approach for general aviation or aerial agriculture as we have for them. It’s only when you get into government do you even have the conversation of whether there should be a one size fits all approach. Industry knows you don’t need that. ” For members of industry like Hurst, regulatory reform is not simply a difficult policy question but a symbol for much that is wrong with CASA’s approach to regulation. Complaints about the glacial pace of regulatory reform and the overly legalistic draft regulations crystallise a view many hold of CASA itself: as a bureaucratic scold more interested in prosecuting violations of obscurely-worded rules than in helping operators fly safely. As the Australian Aviation Associations Forum, an alliance of peak aviation associations, put it in a recent policy statement, the emerging framework represents a “complex approach in both content and drafting style that seeks to obfuscate operational clarity and certainty for the likelihood of a successful criminal prosecution,with a complete failing of the original intent of ‘safety through clarity’. ” Like others, the forum also argues that CASA, as an enforcer of regulations, should not be in charge of drafting those regulations.

It’s a difficult decision, and that’s probably why it’s been going on for 20 years.

Many in industry, in other words, hope the ASRR review will not simply find consensus on sticky policy question but provide a forum for a much broader reassessment of CASA’s organisation and direction.

“CASA doesn’t have an aviation problem, it has a management problem,” Hurst said. “Clearly it’s the organisational issues that flavour why regulatory reform has taken so long and produced such bad outcomes. But it’s also clear that CASA can’t fix itself. ” Hurst said the industry had been deeply disappointed by the Aviation White Paper produced by the previous government but was hoping – if not exactly expecting – that this time would be different.

“There’s lots of discussion about this really being the last chance” to fix CASA, Hurst said. “I think that’s a bit dramatic, but it’s a very significant turning point. There’s no doubt there are some real impediments to a healthy industry right now and most of them are government-imposed.

“I have every confidence that the panel will produce a good report,” he added. “The take that we’ve got is that the arguments we’re making are resonating. But it’s really going to be in the hands of the Minister. ” For its part, Forsyth said the panel was to reconvene in mid-February to begin analysing submissions and “getting the issues on the table. ” It will also continue to conduct interviews targeted toward specific issues such as medical testing of aircrews, and will seek input from air safety regulators in other countries. Though he stressed that the panel had yet to reach any sort of firm opinions, Forsyth indicated that recommending a shift in direction on regulatory reform is a clear possibility.

“It may well be that the direction [CASA is] currently embarked on is the simple solution, but ideally Australia should try to avoid unique regulations. It’s just a matter of which standard we try to harmonise with. ” Finding consensus on that question will require no small piece of diplomacy. Answering the much broader criticisms of CASA may well lie beyond diplomacy’s reach.