Jim Turnour (Leichhardt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to support the Civil Aviation Amendment Bill 2009 and the Transport Safety Investigation Amendment Bill 2009. These bills came out of reforms from a range of different reports, as the shadow minister for transport has mentioned, such as reports from Senate inquiries. They also came out of the green paper last year and Minister Albanese’s moves to establish a national aviation strategy. It is fundamental that we are now moving down this track for the first time, pulling together a national aviation strategy and pulling together all the different components of aviation that are so important to Australia generally but particularly to regional areas. These reforms are particularly important in terms of improving safety and making the operations of CASA and the Australian Transport Safety Bureau work more effectively and efficiently.

These two bills enable CASA to establish another small member board. We heard that one was abolished back in 2003, but the legislation will re-establish that board. There are some other, technical changes in relation to the operation of CASA that I will come to. Also, the second bill will establish the Australian Transport Safety Bureau as a statutory agency within the portfolio of the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government.

Aviation is critical to Australia but is particularly critical to regions like Tropical North Queensland, the Torres Strait and Cape York. My electorate of Tropical North Queensland is a very diverse region that is dependent on aviation. For many people living in capital cities, aeroplanes may be something they get on to go on holidays, whether it is in Australia or overseas, but for people living in the Torres Strait, for example, aviation is the only way that they can get around to visit their families; it is the only way that they can get mail and the paper. It is a critical part of their lives and it is a critical part of their ability to live normal lives, in the same way the motor car has become so critical to many people in mainland Australia.

Similarly, communities in Cape York—whether they are remote Aboriginal communities or communities in Weipa and Cooktown, which are more strongly non-Indigenous communities—are very dependent on aviation. There are extended periods when the roads are closed and road traffic cannot get into those areas, and they are highly dependent on aviation. The economies of Cairns and Port Douglas are driven to a large extent by tourism. The industry is estimated to be worth more than $2 billion in the region and we have more than 30,000 jobs directly and indirectly dependent on the industry. More than two million visitors a year come to Cairns. Some drive but the vast majority of them fly there either through domestic airlines or through international airlines. We are an international gateway. The importance of aviation can be no greater than in the region that I represent, the region of Leichardt. It is great to be here today supporting this legislation because it is particularly important that we maintain strong safety within our aviation sector—our international aviation sector, our domestic aviation sector but particularly our general aviation sector.

One of the critical issues in general aviation that is still ongoing in my electorate is the grounding of Aero Tropics, which happened on 27 June last year, late on a Friday afternoon. Aero Tropics has since gone into receivership and I understand is now going into liquidation. Aero Tropics was selling the tickets and was the branding of the Transair aircraft which crashed at Lockhart River in May 2005, a crash in which 15 lives were lost. It was the worst aviation disaster in about 40 years. Aero Tropics has been mentioned as being the operator of the airline that crashed. The crash is quite famous and has been mentioned by many speakers today. As a result of that crash, there has been a real drive from the community, other sections of government and the opposition at the time of the crash—the Labor Party—to see changes and improvements in safety. Senator Jan McLucas was particularly involved in this, and Australian Story covered it recently.

This legislation will enable CASA not only to establish a board but to take action more quickly to ground airlines they have real safety concerns about. Tragically, people died in Lockhart River, but Transair continued to operate for an extended period of time. Part of the reason for that is that within the current legislation it is actually very difficult for CASA to quickly ground airlines they have concerns about. And we experienced this situation again last year with the grounding of Aero Tropics. It was grounded late on a Friday afternoon. I did not find out about it until late on Friday afternoon, and then only indirectly. I can understand from CASA’s point of view that they are only about safety, but people were expecting planes to arrive on Saturday morning and they were not going to show up because CASA had grounded the airline. As I am the federal representative up there, people were starting to ring up my office to ask what was going on. There was a certain amount of confusion as a result of the way that grounding was handled. I understand that CASA wanted to do the right thing, and they did do the right thing in grounding that airline, but it resulted in Aero Tropics going through a process that effectively got them up and flying again.

Some of the details of the provisions in this legislation will enable CASA to more effectively and more quickly make decisions that ground airlines they have real concerns about. This will put certainty into the community—which is very important—and it will enable us also to move on much more quickly in terms of getting replacements if that is what needs to happen. Because the reality is that from June last year there has not been an RPT—a regular transport service—up and running in the Torres Strait. Part of the reason for that is the delays that have taken place as a result of Aero Tropics getting up and flying again and then subsequently being grounded again. The operator of Aero Tropics was out communicating to his customers and clients that CASA were effectively treating him unfairly—that CASA were behaving irresponsibly. As the local member, I sought to work with the minister and work with the operator to deal with these issues, but I would talk to the operator and hear one thing and then talk to the minister’s office and have further briefings back but hear a quite different message. We need to establish within CASA the ability for these issues to be resolved much more effectively. We need to give CASA the ability to work much more effectively in taking action against airlines that need to be grounded, because there was a hell of a lot of confusion created in the community and a hell of a lot of anger and mistrust that developed between that community and CASA.

I facilitated meetings between some of the community leaders and CASA through the minister’s office and I think we have bridged that. I would like to thank the minister for the support that he has given to me and for the work that CASA has done. But I can assure you that when your plane has not arrived and you need to get to a medical appointment, or you are just wanting to read the paper and you are out on an outer islands community—and you are actually getting communicated to by the airline operator who is telling you one thing and CASA is not telling you anything—you start to think that CASA is effectively being a bit of a bully and is acting inappropriately. But when they finally did ground the airline—and it has not become public, but I am sure over time it will as these investigations go on—it was found that there was an imminent safety risk. That risk was not to people in the numbers that we saw killed in the Lockhart River crash, but there was a significant safety risk that could have seen people die again in the Torres Strait. And that would have been a tragedy not only for those families and for CASA but for everybody in this House. It is we who are responsible for introducing legislation that ensures that people in communities like mine can get on an aircraft—whether it is a little twin-engine or single-engine light aircraft in the Cape York and Torres Strait or an A380 aircraft out of Sydney—and feel comfortable and confident that they can fly safety.

That is clearly not working under the current system because it again took CASA an extended period of time before it could finally ground Aero Tropics. On grounding Aero Tropics, eventually they did become financially insolvent and have gone into liquidation. But until that happened, nobody else was particularly interested in coming in and taking up those routes. We were lucky enough to work with the minister and the minister’s office to get West Wing Aviation quickly back into Cape York after the grounding on 27 June, and we were able to get the mail services running up there. But I stress again that in Torres Strait we are still in a situation where there are no regular transport services. People on the outer islands of the Torres Strait are relying on charter services to fly them around, and most of them cannot afford that. So it is basically government officials, and people being transported by government, who are getting around. That is the only way that people are still getting around out there.

These changes are bread-and-butter issues for those communities. We are now seeing West Wing look into operating in the Torres Strait, but it took months for them to even seriously look at that because of the toing and froing that went on as a result of CASA’s inability to effectively ground this airline. Changes within these bills will make that possible and will prevent such situations as occurred after the Lockhart River crash where Transair continued to operate for a period of time. As I said, we currently have the situation where it took a number of months before Aero Tropics was finally grounded in the Torres Strait. We did get a decision on that; Aero Tropics became unfinancial and insolvent and we can now see another operator coming in. We have West Wing working—and I continue to work with CASA and communicate with them about the approval to them as an operator in the Torres Strait—and I am making sure that I am getting proper briefings and that the government is doing all it can to support this new airline that wants to come in. But it is too long. It is eight months, and we need to get an airline back into the Torres Strait.

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