Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

The opposition is happy to support this amendment. It deals with the issue of the privacy of conversations amongst aircraft crew and the need to ensure that that privacy is appropriately respected. As I said in my remarks during the debate on this bill, I am sure that no-one ever expected there would be restrictions on the maintenance of cockpit voice recorders because of privacy provisions. There was never that intention, and I thought it was stretching the privacy rules to the absolute limit when maintenance staff gave the reason, as an excuse for not maintaining the cockpit voice recorder, that it might infringe the privacy of the conversations that were recorded on it. Frankly, safety is a priority issue and sometimes we have to accept some compromises in other areas to ensure that that safety is maintained.

Clearly, everybody believes that there is not much point in having cockpit voice recorders unless regular maintenance can be undertaken without any kind of interference or obstruction. So the opposition was happy to support the original bill. After the bill had gone through the House of Representatives, pilots raised concerns that there may not be adequate protection for those casual conversations which are inadvertently picked up on cockpit voice recorders during a flight. They proposed that pilots, to ensure that these conversations were kept private, should have a right of veto over whether or not the cockpit voice recorder could be maintained. I think that went too far. You cannot really have a situation where a pilot, co-pilot or any of the crew could have a right to essentially prevent maintenance from occurring because of what they may have said on the cockpit voice recorder on its last flight. There are, as the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government has rightly said, already quite significant rules guaranteeing the privacy of any such information. That is as it ought to be.

There have been some issues about whether it might be possible to recover ancient, wiped out conversations through modern technology that are actually no longer on the primary record of the cockpit voice recorder. I do not really know that I have a satisfactory technical answer as to whether that is actually possible but, for that reason, I think the suggestion that the Privacy Commissioner have a look at this issue after 12 months of operation is reasonable.

I also felt that the original amendment proposed by Independent senators—that a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ rule be applied—would essentially make the original legislation, as it was intended, unworkable. If each member of the crew could have three goes at knocking off maintenance then clearly, over the course of a year, there might never be any maintenance undertaken. So I do not think that was a practical amendment. If there are issues associated with privacy, then the Privacy Commissioner can have a look at them as a result of this amendment. Frankly, I doubt that there will be issues but, if there are, it is right that the Privacy Commissioner should have a look at them and see what needs to be done to correct any unintended consequences of this legislation.

I make the point, again, that the primary objective of this legislation is to ensure that cockpit voice recorders are maintained. There should not be any technical barriers put in the way of that and that will have to be the priority outcome, even taking into account the concerns of pilots in relation to their casual conversations. To just make one final point, the pilots are, I am told, to be notified in advance when the maintenance schedule is going to occur. It is probably good advice to them to remember that what they are saying in that conversation will be recorded. But even if they say something they should not say, or if they regret something they said, the privacy laws still give them protection.

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