[Peetwo]

Hansard OUT - ASA QON??

Ref: https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/sea...nt=Default

Via Youtube:

Via the Hansard:

Senator CANAVAN: Chair, I know we're running out of time, but I've just got a few questions on the radar at the Rockhampton and Mackay airports. Have you seen the reports?

Mr Harfield : Yes, I have.

Senator CANAVAN: The reports are that some unnamed officials—I'm mindful of that—said it was a second-rate radar and that there have been 221 incidents since July last year of aircraft dropping off the radars on approach to Rockhampton or Mackay. I'm particularly interested to know whether or not ADS-B equipment will be installed at these airports soon and, if not, why not?

Mr Harfield : I need to go back to the initial statement. The report that was in the Australian is incorrect.

CHAIR: That's a shock. My God.

Senator WHITE: Oh, who knew?

CHAIR: My God, Murdoch did something wrong.

Senator CANAVAN: Well, hang on. I'm interested in the explanation here. In fairness, it's not a report from the Australian; it's evidently an unnamed official person.

Mr Harfield : Correct, but I just want to say that it was reported in the Australian. Prior to July last year, the airspace around Rockhampton and Mackay was controlled from the tower without the use of any radar. So it was done, how we would call, procedurally. Although they could get some sort of situation awareness, it was actually managed without the radar, even though we had radar coverage there. In July we transitioned not only Rockhampton and Mackay but also Launceston and Hobart, where we are utilising the radar and managing it from either Brisbane Centre or Melbourne Centre, as we do for Sydney, Brisbane or Melbourne, and started running them like we would a capital city aerodrome.

In terms of utilising the radar, radar is a line-of-sight technology, and it cannot always see around mountains. But what it did provide was a safety enhancement because we were able to use the safety alerts that are utilised with our air traffic control system in our centres. For example, one of the safety alerts that was introduced and didn't exist before July was what we would call the minimum safe altitude warning, where the system sends an alert if the pilot goes below the lower safe altitude terrain. That did not exist prior to July.

The reports that are mentioned were conducted at our request. When we put radar in and were starting to utilise it for the first time, it had to be tuned. So we wanted reports from the controllers about where they saw aeroplanes drop out or where there were holes in the coverage. Prior to July, they were being separated without the use of radar and that continues to be done today, even if there is radar coverage and there's a dropout. So there is no issue with safety. The reason we wanted to do that is so that we could tune the radar.

On 3 and 4 March—coming up in a couple of weeks—our techs are going up to the Mount Alma radar, where they will tune the radar, and some of these holes will disappear as a result of re-tuning the radar. In conjunction with that, we are supplementing this with the introduction of ADS-B and continuing that coverage. Further to that, because both radar and even ADS-B are terrestrial-type technologies—you might have seen recently that Skycraft, a company that's a spinoff from the University of New South Wales, put up their first satellite as a proof of concept. We are starting to utilise and explore that so that ADS-B as well as communications are coming from satellite, which means we don't get holes anymore because it's looking down. So we're continuing to try to enhance safety. That's the background to that.

Senator CANAVAN: Apparently this article is saying that air traffic controllers are claiming that Airservices Australia is baulking at the cost of installing a new TAR system and blamed that for the delays in the ADS-B as well. Are you rejecting that?

Mr Harfield : That is not correct. I absolutely reject that.

Senator CANAVAN: Are you saying air traffic controllers are wrong? Have you spoken to air traffic controllers yourself?

Mr Harfield : Yes, I speak to them all the time. This is the first time this has been raised.

Senator CANAVAN: They have not raised that with you?

Mr Harfield : Correct.

Senator CANAVAN: There was a report in The Australian that at least one shift manager had been asked to stop submitting safety reports. Have you investigated whether that is true?

Mr Harfield : I have investigated that. What was asked—this is similar to what Senator McKenzie said about some complaints—was that when we identified a particular gap in the radar coverage there's no point continuing to report on that time and time again, because we have an action in place. Anything new, or something that we have not already got registered, we're happy to take on the report for, but there's no point continuing to report on the same issue when we've got something being done.

Senator CANAVAN: When will the ATSB system be installed in Rockhampton and Mackay?

Mr Harfield : There is some ATSB already in place, so we're making sure that feed comes into the system. Additional sites will come online early next year.

Senator CANAVAN: You might also want to brief the department. They didn't have any idea that this was even reported, which shocked me, given the nature of this article. You'd think people in the aviation policy team would be monitoring the media for these sorts of stories. I thank you very much for your information, Mr Harfield; it's very helpful.

CHAIR: Thank you, Mr Harfield, and your officers. It is a terribly damning headline when you read that, so I thank you very much for clearing that up for us.

Plus tabled by Senator Canavan: Ref - https://www.aph.gov.au/-/media/Estimates...8B8BC53CE6



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