Poll over – time to focus

Whether CASA likes it or not, or whether its culture lends itself to the concept or not, or whether some CASA personnel – despite all evidence to the contrary – know better than industry, CASA is in a safety partnership with industry.

The important role of the regulator in providing minimum standards for safe operations and enforcing them is a ‘given’ in Australia’s aviation safety system. However, CASA’s approach should be informed and driven by a sober and deep analysis of risk – both consequence and probability.

Embedding the classification of operations and an accompanying profile of the appetite for risk for each sector in the Act would be a big step forward. Aerial work is not the same as airlines and the differences need to be embedded in regulatory drafting and operational oversight.

A key issue, though, is CASA’s willingness to adopt this sensible and common approach to improving safety. New legislation will have to be monitored closely to ensure it is delivered as intended, otherwise legislative change will simply melt away like the Forsyth Report as CASA pursues the unacceptable ‘business as usual’.

Legislative reform is only one of the levers available to the Minister. Consideration should also be given to structural reform to remove bottlenecks, cultural reform through a better recruitment approach and ongoing regulatory reform to remove red tape industry has been burdened with over the past 20 years.

The current list of industry grievances with CASA continues to grow through ineffective systems, bad attitudes and decisions being made too low on the tree.

TAAAF has also provided a useful agenda for reform of CASA in a preelection policy that is available from the AAAA website.

All of this change could be avoided if CASA worked with industry to multiply its relevance and its effectiveness. Improving safety should not be this hard.

‘Aerial work is not the same as airlines … improving safety should not be this hard’