[Peetwo]

Ministers, Mandarins & Minions: The road to dusty ruin -

A thread drift off the Mount NCN thread - that has major relevance to the 'state of our nation' and of course the desperate state of our aviation industry, in particular small to middle size aviation businesses, airports and private pilot/ aircraft owners both recreational & sporting - that IMO needs to be preserved and the debate hopefully continued...Cheers P2      

A vexed question - Responsibility, not laws.

Reading through the Thorny and GD offerings triggered a line of thought which needs to be aired. I’m not even sure I’ve got the right end of the stick, but it’s worth a few lines to try and tease some sense out of a jumble of stray thoughts.

One of the things I do not like about Australia is the perennial  ‘habit’ of bleating for more and more rules; at all levels. In the workplace we are drowning in ‘rules’; in industry we are submerged in ‘rules’; in our private lives, our homes, our hospitals, our cars; in every facet of life from waking to toddling up the wooden hill to bed; rules rule. I’d bet there are even rules about sleeping.  Why is it so?  The best answer I can come up with is that ‘we’ keep asking for them. All a politician can do – in reality – is pass law (well that and wind). From the town council to the Senate – law after law after law.  Miles and miles of paper; millions of dollars and a huge industry associated with ‘law’. When faced with a complex problem, I often try to boil it down and relate it to a ‘simple’ element; like algebra – once you can ‘understand’ the fundamentals; complex equations become simple as the elements break down into manageable pieces of the puzzle.

Dogs – were the first and easiest example I could work with. Lots of ‘em, across a huge range of breeds and a wide cross section of the community. There are some pretty draconian ‘laws’ surrounding simple dog ownership – at council level – some good, some silly and others used cynically as a revenue raising tool.  Take registration and micro-chip tagging of your dog; bloody good idea, no brainer.  Then look at the problems ‘off leash’ creates for a council; it totally discriminates against owners with properly managed animals and is also a great little earner.  At 6am, in an empty park, you will be fined if Fido is ‘off leash’. No matter that Fido is a geriatric, miniature poodle, four Kg over weight and toothless.  The law cannot discriminate or be flexible – it’s one way for all.  At 10 am, in the same park, some fool letting a fighting fit big pit bull run loose where the kids are playing footy, rampaging through the picnics – same fine.  What a law cannot do is teach responsibility or common sense.  The reason for the law is that through irresponsible owners, someone got offended; or, hurt, or; some fool kid decided it was great sport to torment an animal and got roughed up (lack of parental responsibility, more rules).  Same-same; there is a bleating group at council, demanding ‘they’ do something.  Council go for the quick, cheap, easy fix with an eye on the revenue.  This is easier than tackling the real problems; teaching owner responsibility and helping those who cannot train their animal to do so.  Issue a licence to those who can prove, through established tests, that ‘their’ dog is reliable and may be ‘off-leash’; provided, the owner accepts full criminal responsibility for any damage or injury caused by their dog. In short, place the responsibility and legal onus firmly where it belongs.

Australians in general always seem to want ‘something’ done by someone else. Bleat long and loud and get a new law passed. This does not prevent those determined to do something from doing it, simply gives the prosecution a platform to sheet home blame – after the fact.  There are laws against murder; many of ‘em, from the Bible through to the World court; do they prevent murder?  You know they don’t.  There are laws about dogs off leash; do they prevent the fool with a mutt running amuck at the cricket; again, you know they don’t.  So WTD has this to with aviation? Good question.

With one notable exception, every operator I’ve ever had to do with wanted to ‘do the right thing’.  Even the greedy and venal realise that there is more money to be made by operating ‘efficiently’ and operating ‘safely’ is a must as accidents cost a lot more. There needs to be a basic standard set, basic rules to prevent incident and accident; the ten commandments if you will. After that, responsible operators will always try to do the right thing – it is, after all in their best interests to do so.  But in the end it is solely ‘their’ responsibility; the law reflects that.  So why not strip away the layers of law which were produced to simply absolve the government and the department of any or all responsibility. “Thou shalt not run out of fuel”. If you do, we will come down like a ton load of bricks – unless there is a reasonable excuse.  There is no need for thousands and thousands of nit-picking, revenue generating, work creating ‘regulations’ which were created in deep knee jerk.  The responsibility for safe operation rests entirely with the operator; same as the hapless dog owner with NFI and who could care less, but penalises the rest – by default.  Simple rules are hard to break, no wriggle room.  

Aye well, it is Sunday and a ramble is allowed (rules). Not certain I’ve made the point, actually I’m not sure there is a point; except I’m sick to my back teeth of pointless, mindless acres of ‘rules’ which will never prevent those who intend to break ‘em, doing so.

Enough of random thoughts and trying to solve puzzles. There are folk cleverer than I who have tried to solve this riddle – probably all went mad trying. So, I shall cease and desist while the old brain is still capable of hunting down a second coffee; and perhaps a Blueberry muffin.

Toot toot.

K, you are on the right right tram but maybe jumped off in frustration before terminal conclusion. This is a place that has glittering prizes provided one can eschew and forgo the mind lolly comfort stations. Don't we grumble about government planners but in the end acquiesce and succumb to the keepers of Crown Privilege? Then there's the discomfort to perceive the vast money flows guided not by Adam Smith's invisible hand of free enterprise but by political influence.

Australians rail against Authority but cry "there should be a law against that". We foolishly accepted that we were recipients of a government gifted "privilege" to fly. We accepted Aviation Mediclals and huge piles of regulations and everyone has an opinion about how everyone else should technique their job.

We set up Canberra, our biggest mistake. A model capital without that messy free enterprise stuff. A souless city of stratified socialist control, near 400,000 that must extol the necessity of planning and the virtue of deleting risk from life. Guess who pays the bill? Where a $600,000pa public servant can walk out of his five year contract after less than two years with no explanation to taxpayer or industry. He was head of his excruciatingly named Tiger Team, the Exemption inventors for the $300 million dollar new and unworkable aviation rules.

Melbourne said to be the World's most liveable city, how smug can you be? Yes fine if you already own a piece of it and accept the traffic jams and grotty bits of planner frozen wastelands. You have your little piece of dirt, your number one asset;  value artificially pushed up by "planning", read government control, to stratospheric levels thus bloating banks with mountains of mortgage moneys and leaving the not so well off and new comers out in the cold with little to do but take the dole, make trouble and wonder how previous waves of migrants did so well (ie. Before Planning). To you younger people yes BP was a time. In the 50s, 60s you could make an airstrip where you wanted. I bought seaside building blocks for $400 each realising, correctly, that the artificial land zoning would create a price hiking shortage. There was practically no unemployment. You could by a house in Brighton for $16,000. Before Planning, early 70s, really started to bite we made it to USD$1.50 for one of ours. Imagine shopping in the US at that rate. We've become so stupid that we think, like Glenn Stevens, that it's a good thing our dollar is devalued. Everything in Australia is worth less to the world than it was before, even your cups and saucers. How's that for clever country?

We have to get past the ifs and buts, freedom works, great prosperity, better environment (EPA laws are good) is within reach if we go for property rights and cause government to relinquish its mindset of micro management by institutionalized bureaucracy. We can't afford the present trajectory, something has to give, it can go well if we try, otherwise we continue to muddle along downhill.

'K' - Edit - Choc Frog Sandy.