[Peetwo]

GlenB embuggerance update: 08/07/22

Sandy's take/disgust, via the UP...  

CASA prying into financial matters

Quote LB

“CA Act provisions relating to financial viability of AOC applicants have been in there for decades, and CASA has been prying into the financial arrangements of AOC holders - to the extent those arrangements are relevant to financial viability - for that long.”

In my recollection maybe that was the position for quite a few years but for most of my career in training and charter that interference was resisted and not legal. Whatever that timeline of that particular concept, that government should make judgement about the viability of a business, is of course completely at odds with our freedoms and against free enterprise which confers our high standard of living. It is also unintelligent by virtue of the undeniable fact that a government instrumentality will never be in possession of all of the facts leading to business decisions, nor have the driving incentives to discover those facts.

Ultimately do you want government to have this power to control our lives and if we confer this power who will decide the limits? Who’s to say that give away your rights you will ever get them back again?

And we should never lose sight of the fact that CASA’s extreme regulatory regime is inimical to a healthy GA sector and makes poor contrast to the rational regulations of the USA, where, according to John King of highly respected King’s Schools (also John was brought to Australia by CASA as consultant) some 70% of USA pilots are trained outside the Part 141/142 flying schools and with no formal syllabus. Shock horror! No syllabus! no hundreds of tick off signatures? Correct, the system allows innovation and individual tailored training followed by a rigorous testing regime before licence issue. Their safety record is arguably better than ours.

Lastly, CASA by its very name, and by its legislated obligation, claims that “safety” is its overriding purpose,
but we know that that is a total nonsense because it makes no rational risk assessments for any of its extraordinary rule changes or administrative actions. In judgment against Angel Flight it’s now clear that the Act doesn’t require any such reality to restrain CASA in any way shape or form. No Ministerial or obvious legal restraint as Glen Buckley has learned.

What a disastrous outcome for Australia, having to import airline pilots! Let alone the loss of hundreds of flying schools, charter operators and maintenance businesses. Huge loss of jobs, loss of airports, a continuing disgrace and blot on our democracy where the notion of giving away government responsibility for aviation to an unelected ‘independent’ corporate monopoly has yet to be recognised by government as a monumental failure of policy.

Cleary an example of failure; by not following the principle of responsible government.

Instead it tried on what seemed to be an expedient way of taking aviation off the books and away from Ministerial responsibility, conceived and executed by the Hawke Labor government with Gareth Evans as Minister. 1988, year of shame. To its credit at the time the Liberal Opposition opposed the creation of the statutory body for aviation but seems to have washed its hands ever since.

MTF...P2