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

They are a great Townsville-based airline under Mr Collings. They have been expanding quite widely, and I have had a chance to talk to him as well, but we do desperately need them back up there working. They are providing a good service into Cape York after taking over from Aero Tropics. So this legislation is critically important to my region, particularly to those isolated communities.

I think the establishment of the board was a recommendation that came out of the Senate inquiry following the Lockhart River crash. By creating an expert five-member board, the bill will strengthen CASA as a safety and oversight agency. The members of the board will not be appointed to represent sectional interests but will be charged with improving safety for the Australian community. This board will not be involved in the day-to-day running of CASA but will function at a tactical level by assisting CASA in managing the extraordinary growth of aviation and technological changes in aviation in Australia. The board will decide on the objectives, strategies and policies to be followed by CASA and ensure that CASA performs its functions efficiently and effectively.

When you ground an airline, particularly in isolated communities, it is most important that you operate within the law and do what you need to do. You need to be able to communicate with the community effectively about what is happening and why, because people depend on these services. I hope that is an issue that the new board takes up. It is certainly an issue that I have spoken to CASA directly about. I know that CASA responded to this when we spoke to them through the minister’s office.

One of the changes for CASA is the automatic stay provision. I have talked about the difficulties when grounding an airline. This legislation will make it easier to keep unsafe operators out of our skies. Currently, when CASA has made a decision to suspend or cancel operators who have been found to be unsafe, the routine application of an automatic stay has meant that these operators can continue flying for months. The examples that I have given highlight that. Under the existing legislation, most decisions of this kind are automatically stayed for five days, and for a further 90 days thereafter if the person affected by the decision lodges an application for review in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal within the initial five-day period. If the tribunal is unable to hear the appeal within 90 days, it may extend the stay until it is able to do so. I mentioned Transair as one practical example but Aero Tropics is another practical example. This legislation will enable CASA to move more quickly and effectively to ground airlines. As I have said, this will improve safety, but it will also create certainty for those local communities.

This legislation also closes a loophole in relation to the negligent carriage of dangerous goods on board an aircraft. The carriage of dangerous goods is a major safety issue potentially putting lives at risk. This legislation will include the offence of negligent carriage or consignment of dangerous goods. This will ensure that lack of care in the duty of carriage and consignment is addressed. It will also clarify and refine CASA’s investigative powers and bring its search warrant procedures in line with the current Commonwealth criminal justice procedures.

This legislation will also have some technical changes that will ensure better oversight of overseas carriers. I have spent most of my time talking about general aviation today because it is such an important bread-and-butter issue for people living in the Cape, the Torres Strait and the Gulf. But, as I also mentioned earlier, aviation is critically important to the community of Cairns and Port Douglas, which I am very proud to represent here. International aviation is very critical to driving our tourism economy and bringing visitors there, as is domestic aviation. This legislation will greatly improve CASA’s ability to apply oversight to foreign airlines flying into Australia. When deciding whether to allow an airline to operate in Australia, CASA will now be able to take into consideration a broader range of issues, including the conduct of that airline in their home country and other parts of the world, and the level of oversight by civil aviation authorities in the airline’s home country. This legislation will ensure that airlines that operate out of foreign countries and end up flying to Australia receive adequate oversight outside Australia; otherwise an air operators certificate will not be issued. So this legislation will strengthen CASA’s ability to oversight foreign carriers coming to Australia, which I think is particularly important.

As I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, these changes are part of our national aviation strategy. We are looking very much at the local tourism industry and local businesses and towards the white paper. There have been a number of submissions made by tourism operators and other businesses in my region. We certainly want to maintain the competitiveness of Cairns as an international destination, but, sadly, following changes that took effect last December, we saw Qantas cut flights out of there. I will continue to work with the minister’s office and with local industry to do all we can to continue to maintain Cairns as an internationally competitive airport for people to come to. We will be looking to work with the minister on some of these issues.

The other part of this legislation involves changes to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau and strengthening its independence. Creating it as a statutory authority will take it outside the department, ensuring that there is no conflict of interest so that it can properly investigate accidents when they occur and make sure that there is full transparency in investigations. This is particularly important because when accidents happen, tragically, people generally lose their lives. You can have a car accident and you may not lose your life, but generally when planes come out of the air, people often die, and this is tragic.

Following the Lockhart River crash, we saw the campaign of Shane Urquhart, whose daughter, Sally, tragically died in that crash. When you have a department or authority, like CASA, that is overseeing air transport safety in this country, it is particularly important that there is an independent statutory authority that is undertaking an investigation so that there clearly is independence. I know that Mr Urquhart has welcomed the changes that are coming with this legislation. He would obviously like to see more things happen and more support and funding into these organisations. The government is very serious about improving safety. It is a critical issue in my electorate, but it is also a critical issue for the nation. I congratulate the minister for the work that he is doing in this area. I thank CASA for their support and advice to me on this issue. I will continue to argue strongly and work hard for my local community. We desperately need to get West Wing up and flying in the Torres Strait so that we can return air services to those communities. But, fundamentally, those communities want to know that they can get in a plane safely, and that is what this legislation will do—it will improve and increase safety through changes to CASA and the Australian Transport Safety Bureau. I highly commend these bills to the House.

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