[Peetwo]

AFR calls out Albo/DK on the WOFTAM/bollocks Green Paper - 

Via the AFR:

Labor’s Utopia moment on Qantas isn’t fooling anyone

The aviation green paper isn’t the circuit breaker the Albanese government needs on the national carrier. It simply kicks the reform can down the road again.

Sep 7, 2023 – 10.47am

It’s ironic that Transport Minister Catherine King described aviation as “an industry that has been allowed to drift for too long” on Thursday morning as she launched the federal government’s new aviation green paper.

Because goodness knows there’s nothing in this vacuous document that will halt this drift any time soon. This is a moment drawn straight from Utopia, the television series that satirises the inner workings of bureaucracy.


The aviation green paper won’t put any air between the government and Qantas.  David Rowe

With Labor’s broad support for Qantas looking sillier by the day, and King under fire from all sides for her decision to restrict aviation competition by blocking Qatar Airways from expanding flights to Australia, the Albanese government desperately needs something that will help put a bit of air between it and Qantas, and show it can act tough on the so-called national carrier when it needs to.

But King’s green paper is a classic kick-the-can-down-the-road exercise – which remarkably forms part of an even larger kick-the-can-down-the-road exercise.

The government wants to be seen to be doing something in the aviation sector, but the evidence of the past month suggests political pressure (hello, Qantas and your wondrous Chairman’s Lounge, which every parliamentarian is invited to join) means it is not in any great hurry.

And so, we get the aviation white paper, which King proudly says is the first in a decade. But the process is long: the terms of reference were announced in February this year and won’t be released until a yet-to-be-determined time mid-next year. The solution is the aviation green paper, a device that lets the government look like it is doing twice as much – while still not doing much of anything. Dive into the document and that feeling only grows.

It’s long (224 pages), it has lots of graphs, it’s full of detailed diagnosis of the issues at hand, and asks a series of questions that it wants stakeholders (a very Utopia word) to comment on.

But on the key issues of the day – competition in aviation and consumer protections – that green paper has remarkably little to say.

Only one big idea

On competition, for example, the green paper expresses the government’s interest in improving competition and its desire for people to tell it how to do that.

The only big idea under this heading is the prospect of greater “cabotage” rights for foreign airlines to carry domestic passengers – but the green paper then immediately says the government has no plans to change its current ad-hoc approach to cabotage rights, which only really permits cabotage in exceptional circumstances.

The green paper also acknowledges that competition could be boosted by changes to the way slots are allocated at airports, and references the now infamous review into the management of Sydney Airport by former Productivity Commission boss Peter Harris, which successive governments have sat on since it was delivered in February 2021.

The green paper at least notes the concerns around hoarding of landing slots by incumbent airlines, including Qantas, which the Harris review outlined, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has expressed concern about, and Qantas’ rivals have been complaining about for years.

But as for actually implementing the as-yet-unpublished Harris recommendations? The government will “have more announcements to make about these reforms in due course”.

Surely the time to act on this review, even in some small way, has arrived.

King said at a press conference on Thursday that she would have more to say “shortly” – at least before the white paper is released some time next year.

This is bad miscalculation. Even if we accept the green paper was well in train before the Qantas mess blew up in the past week, the Harris recommendations have been on King’s desk since Labor took power. Surely the time to act on this review, even in some small way, has arrived.

On the issue of consumer protections, the green paper is similarly vague.

It wants stakeholders to comment on a stronger ombudsman model, a charter of customer rights, fixed payout insurance-type products for compensation, and different governance arrangements for the Airline Customer Advocate, who appears to have been about as useful as a screen door on a submarine in the past few years.

The calls for stakeholder submissions are all part of the process, of course. Never mind the fact the government has already published more than 100 submissions to the aviation white paper’s terms of reference; the green paper consultation process takes time, and that feeds into the white paper, then the white paper is published, then there is consultation on that – and pretty soon it’s time for the next white paper process to start!

Chanticleer is being extra cynical here. No doubt there are lots of important conversation starters in this green paper, and it does cover a lot of ground across everything from training and decarbonisation to freight and general aviation.

But in a week where the early retirement of Alan Joyce was a way for Qantas to show it had heard the public’s anger, the green paper could have – should have – provided the government with circuit breaker, a chance to show it too has listened.

But the public can tell the difference between action and more talk. We’ve seen this episode before.

In response to that article the GAAAI made this comment in reply:

GAAAI - General Aviation & Airports Association
1 d

A horrible excursion into incompetency with the introduction of the new the Aviation ‘Green Paper’.
Minister King fails to comprehend the scarred and iniquitous battlefield the aviation sector finds itself in - through no fault of its own. The Minister, and Government at large, fail to comprehend the landscape in any meaningful way.

Labor disappoints the aviation sector on a grand scale.

The industry remains hamstrung by greed of privatised functions. Ironically the players have been given the power they abuse by successive governments, and actively supported in the Market Power abuse by the light hands/no hands governance.

Airports, privatised on long leases, plot against aviation operators and customers alike, and the whole of the General Aviation sector are being done over by the long lease holders or airports like Essendon and Moorabbin.

And Joyce types flourish with unjust enrichment, while the industry dies a quite death and the Minister what does she do? Slays a Green Paper Response ?. Truth is stranger than fiction.

Well said!! -   

MTF...P2