The farce of Part 61

It is important to note that there are few Australian industry sectors that are subject to the extent of economic regulation and government policy settings that Australia’s major airports are subjected to.

This regulation covers a vast array of issues, with everything from the movements cap at Sydney Airport through to prescribed business planning content and processes.

Much of this regulation is a factor of historical and portfolio ownership within the Commonwealth, as well as the perceived community profile with airports.

In this context, sensible initiatives to reduce the regulatory burden should be taken into consideration and the AAA has made a number of key recommendations in response to the discussion paper.

The legislation currently specifies that the affected federally-leased airports are to submit a new master plan every five years, which is arguably an unreasonable imposition on industry.

The AAA recommended that the current master plan submission cycle be extended to 10 years, with an option provided for the airport to conduct a review and update of the master plan at the five year point to reflect any substantial variations in circumstances.

Extending the requirement to submit a master plan every 10 years would be more reflective of the fact that airports are critical pieces of infrastructure, requiring substantial investment.

The planning for development at airports usually extends beyond a five year period, which is evident at both major and smaller regional airports.

Increasing the time between submitting master plans would also recognise the fact that many master plans (particularly those of capital city airports) can take up to two years to complete – effectively resulting in a three-year gap rather than five years.

Moving to a 10-year master plan submission cycle would also more closely align the airport planning process with those of many local and state government planning authorities.

Removing this unnecessary red tape will also result in millions of dollars of cost and resource savings for airports, with a single master plan for a major capital city airport often costing over $2 million.

In moving to a 10-year master plan submission process, the AAA and its members recognise the importance of continuity with each airport’s long-term planning objectivesand the importance of stakeholder engagement.

It is for this reason that the AAA has recommended that airports be provided with an option to conduct a review and update of their master plan at the five-year point in the master plan cycle. Safe aviation should be guided by a fair and just regulator that is there to enforce rules when they are being breached and to help pilots and companies become more informed about what they can do to not become a statistic.

Aviation should not be held to ransom by a delusional bureaucracy that in the best Orwellian tradition wants to make the industry think everything is fine despite all evidence to the contrary.

In addition, sitting on your hands as Minister and not getting involved when clearly things are going wrong is not careful and considered leadership – it looks more like neglect.

Still no CASA Board, still no DAS, still no Ministers’ Aviation Advisory Council, still no Ministerial letter of direction under the Act, still no response to the Forsyth Review.

In fact, did the Forsyth Review even happen? Did anyone take any notice?

Clearly CASA hasn’t and why should it? There has been no clear and detailed message from government that CASA must change direction. That means fixing problems like Part 61 rather than letting industry be exposed to such a disgraceful debacle.

The introduction of Part 61 for pilot licensing is deteriorating into farce. Trainers are unsure of what they have to do to be legal, they are unsure of what systems are available if any, and the entire industry is extremely concerned at the new costs being imposed by the new regulatory suite.

Unlike assurances from CASA that there are no costs because CASA is graciously transitioning people to the new licence structure for free – how generous! – the costs will come thick and fast as new requirements for rating renewals start to bite. In the rotary sector, this is particularly onerous because of the high number of aircraft with type ratings that are required, not because of risk or significant differences, but because of history.

For more experienced instructors and pilots, rating renewals may come at the rate of one every few months – with the attendant new costs.

For CASA to say there are no additional costs associated with Part 61 simply highlights who has read the part and understands the implications and who has not. If CASA wants to claim industry has got it wrong, then it should also explain why there was an exemption issued on the same day as the regs started to enable firefighting operations to continue this summer.

As more of Part 61 is exposed and explored, the more significant the problems seem to be. The relationship between amendments made the week before the regs started, CASR Part 202 transitional arrangements, Part 61 regulations, Part 61 MOS, the Examiners Manual, exemptions and existing Parts is complex to say the least. When we add theIn fact, did the Forsyth Review even happen? Did anyone take any notice?number of personal preferences and interpretations now coming out of individuals within CASA, it is perplexing.

You know there is a problem when even CASA staff are looking for loopholes such as Part 61. 040 – which allows CASA to approve a person to conduct certain training activities without being part of a Part 141 organisation or an examiner. This may be a very useful ‘loophole’ – but it sounds identical to the old system of approvals and instruments that CASA was so concerned to eliminate.

AAAA is so concerned that, using written advice from CASA to some 40 key questions, it published its own fact sheet on aerial application and related Part 61 issues to try andprovide timely and accurate advice to members.

A few people in CASA seem to be very busy trying to provide a whole range of advice and interpretations to industry as best they can, but the question must be asked – why was this not in place 12 months ago? And where have all the middle and senior managers disappeared to? Where are the high-level crisis meetings with industry? Where is the error recovery plan? And where is the outreach to industry associations to try and help with communications? There is much that could be amended to ease industry costs and pain – including scrapping the requirement for two-yearly renewals for many ratings and an urgent review of type ratings to simplify requirements, especially for rotary. In addition, the requirement to test every individual competency during a renewal could be replaced with flexibility for the examiner to ‘form an opinion’ that the candidate is competent and safe.

At its simplest, CASA should simply have kept Part 61 in the hangar until it was airworthy.

Unfortunately, that option is no longer available and industry has to try and make this Part fly – despite the obvious sense of foreboding.

One of the great challenges of aviation is maintaining good situational awareness. Clearly CASA has completely lost the picture. The only questions remaining are how will they regain a safe attitude and when? The intention of this review would be to allow the airport an opportunity to update their master plan to reflect any significant unforeseen developments or changes in circumstances.

This process of updating the master plan would also involve similar levels of community, government and stakeholder engagement, but it would not require the development of an entirely new master plan as is currently the case.

In relation to MDPs, consultation with our membership has revealed that the current monetary trigger of $20 million is not appropriate when taking into consideration the size and nature of the projects commonly undertaken at the federally-leased airports.

For example, five MDPs were submitted by one capital cityairport over the last four years to the Minister for consideration, with values ranging from $27 million to $100 million.

If the monetary trigger was raised to $50 million, there would still only have been one major development that would not have had to seek Ministerial approval.

Taking this into consideration, in conjunction with the additional provisions requiring an MDP for any development likely to have a significant environmental or community impact, there would appear to be little reason not to substantially increase the monetary trigger.

It is also important to note that the financial impost on airports of preparing an MDP can be quite considerable (and varied – $200,000 to $1 million) depending on the size and nature of the project.

The AAA recommends that at a minimum the monetary trigger for major development plans must be increased to $50 million.

In conjunction with the revised monetary trigger, the AAA also recommends that an annual indexation be applied to account for inflation and increases in construction costs, similar to the Building and Construction Cost Index.

Additionally, in circumstances where a substantial development may no longer be able to proceed due to any number of factors, including unforeseen changes in financial, operational or market circumstances, the AAA recommends the introduction of a MDP retraction provision to facilitate the withdrawal of an approved MDP project in the event of changed circumstances.

The AAA understands that the Department is currently considering the submissions from industry and will make a determination on next steps in due course.

The AAA looks forward to continuing to work with the Department on its regulatory streamlining package and is hopeful that we can continue to remove unnecessary and costly red tape impediments impacting upon the airport sector.