[Peetwo]

AIOS reaches epidemic proportions in Can'tberra - Part II 

{Previous reference: AIOS reaches epidemic proportions in Can'tberra}

Quoting from 4D thread post: YES miniscule - all is good in aviation

KC said: ..However, ‘Sir Humphrey’ must have visited, as the Public Service ASRR Recommendations progress report , dated 25 August, 2016, informs the Minister that extraordinary progress has happened and they have completed many of the recommendations. Read this report – almost completed???


A review of the report last Friday, 10-12, by myself and other association leaders did not agree with the progress report and could only accept that maybe 3 or 4 recommendations may have been completed. This is a "public service" trying to sound as though they are making progress when in fact, they are not. This is a systemic problem within the public service when aviation is the focal point. Read any review recommendations in the last couple of decades and you will see similarities in the recommendations that confirm permanent change as recommended was not achieved...

Now although I totally agree with KC's sentiments especially when he adds..

For the progress report to be placed on the Infrastructure’s website, then, not only CASA, but other government departments, including CASA’s Board, must have accepted the report.

"Sir Humphrey Appleby" quote: Yes, yes, yes, I do see that there is real dilemma here. In that, while it has been government policy to regard policy as a responsibility of Ministers and administration as a responsibility of Officials, the questions of administrative policy can cause confusion between the policy of administration and the administration of policy, especially when responsibility for the administration of the policy of administration conflicts, or overlaps with, responsibility for the policy of the administration of policy."

Because of that progress report, the public service has to now stifle the complaints by industry by brandishing those that speak up, on behalf of the industry, as radicals not supported by industry.

The current government is relying on such a dedicated public service to placate the constituents because they are too frighten to take the action that is required by proposing legislation that their foes in Parliament could stop, just to embarrass the government. A political dilemma.

What a mess we have ended up with and what a mess the new CEO/DAS of CASA has to confront...

...it is all indeed a mess but the thing is this whole 'head in the sand' (AIOS) syndrome is apparently not unique to aviation safety administration...

Read the following from the AFR and you get the feeling our democracy is in a terrible self-inflicted political mess:

The notion of evidence-based policy in Australia is dead


Barnaby Joyce: dams different from climate. Bradley Kanaris

by Richard Denniss

The notion of evidence-based policy in Australia is dead. While it's been in poor health for some time, it was finally killed by the Coalition backbench last week and replaced with "gut instinct" and "the pub test".

When Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce was recently quizzed about the lack of a business case for a dam he wanted Australian taxpayers to fund he retorted that he prided himself on being a "doer" not a "fluffer" and that he wanted to "get stuck in".

What could go wrong?

Last week Senator Cory Bernardi and George Christensen's insights into energy policy trumped the considered advice of the government's own appointees to the Climate Change Authority and that of the chief scientist. Admittedly, all of those advisers do accept the scientific evidence of human-induced climate change, which renders them "biased" in the eyes of many in the Coalition. Policy advisers who take science seriously?

Where will it end?

The idea that government should be run like a business is one I have never subscribed to but allow me, for a moment, to play along.

Imagine if company directors saw their role as not just generating business ideas, but demanding their ideas be implemented without careful examination. Now imagine that individual shareholders could veto the rollout of, or even consideration of, new business opportunities. Sound workable? That's how the Turnbull government has "organised" itself.

Joyce recently insisted that the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority move from Canberra to Armidale at a cost of $25.6 million and the loss of most of its senior staff. A cost-benefit analysis of the idea conducted at a cost of $272,000 by EY found no economic benefit to the move. It's still going ahead.

A company director that demanded the company headquarters be housed in their parents' property, despite the high rent, would be breaking the law. But apparently a Deputy Prime Minister spending other people's money to deliver benefits to his electorate is simply part of his strategy to "get the country moving".

Philosophers or thought police

In a well-functioning government ministers and backbenchers play an important role in setting strategic direction and ensuring plans are well implemented.

But Coalition MPs increasingly see their role as either "philosopher princes" who can divine the virtue of an idea by simply having had it themselves, or as "thought police" who can veto the mere consideration of an idea proposed by members of their own Coalition.

Kevin Andrews got $200 million to fund "marriage counselling vouchers" to discourage divorce, Matt Canavan got $1 billion for his pet Adani coal mine and, of course, Christopher Pyne shifted $50 billion to build submarines in Adelaide. None of them relied on cost-benefit analysis, but all of them trusted their gut. Would you invest in a company that allocated capital in such a cavalier manner?

Even the Secretary of Treasury, John Fraser, is into the game of ignoring inconvenient advice. Treasury, once the grand champion of economic rationalism, employs more than 800 people, prides itself on being the pre-eminent economic advisers to government, and possesses a dedicated "macroeconomic group". Despite all that, the secretary chose to spend taxpayers' money outsourcing an evaluation of the Rudd government's fiscal stimulus package to Professor Tony Makin.

Makin is a long-term critic of the stimulus package overseen by former treasury secretary Ken Henry and strongly supported by current Prime Minister and Cabinet head Martin Parkinson. Intriguingly the Makin report is not even published on the Treasury website, but on a new "Treasury Research Institute" site.

In recent years research by the World Bank, IMF and OECD have all shown strong support for the effectiveness of, and need for, fiscal stimulus in response to a rapidly slowing economy. But despite 14 references to his own previous work, Makin's report makes no mention of, and provides no rebuttal to, the significant body of mainstream economic thought which he contradicts.

Bernardi doesn't believe in human-induced climate change and Makin doesn't believe that increased public spending in a slowing economy promotes growth. Both of them might be right, but both of them are in a very small minority.

Enron and Bear Stearns provide clear lessons for what happens to companies who insist on only getting advice from supportive sources. Time will tell what happens to governments that do likewise.

Richard Denniss is the chief economist for The Australia Institute
AFR Contributor


Read more: http://www.afr.com/opinion/columnists/listening-to-your-own-great-advice-20161212-gt94c2#ixzz4SiIFuvtW

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Evidence based policy? Is that similar in methodology and/or ideology to 'outcome based regulation' that the current NFI Muppets at FF are so adverse to embracing??

Personally I don't see why they don't admit that it is all about the 'TFBR' (trough feeding based regulation), because there is simply nothing that excuses the amount of 'red tape' that is currently strangling the aviation industry...


MTF...P2