Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Justice and Customs) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate the opportunity to speak on the Civil Aviation Amendment Bill 2009 and the Transport Safety Investigation Amendment Bill 2009. The Civil Aviation Amendment Bill 2009 will create a small, expert board of five members for CASA, Australia’s independent aviation safety regulator. The new board will include CASA’s director of aviation safety and provide high-level direction to the organisation’s regulatory and safety oversight role. The legislation also improves CASA’s ability to oversight foreign carriers flying into Australia, strengthens the provisions for preventing operators from continuing to operate services where CASA considers it unsafe for them to continue and closes a gap in the current legislation by introducing an additional offence of negligently carrying or consigning dangerous goods on an aircraft.

The Transport Safety Investigation Amendment Bill 2009 seeks to reinforce the independence of the ATSB by establishing it as a separate statutory agency with a full-time chief commissioner and two part-time commissioners. Under the proposed changes, the ATSB would have operational independence from the infrastructure department with respect to the exercise of its investigation powers and the administration of its resources. Clarifying the ATSB’s independence as the national safety investigation agency was a key recommendation of the 2007 Miller review. The legislation also gives the ATSB new powers to compel agencies and operators within the aviation industry to respond to its formal recommendations within 90 days, giving the public greater confidence that the lessons from past accidents will be acted upon in a timely manner.

I do not wish to speak about the changes to the ATSB. I have always found it to be an exceptional organisation, managing, as many do, on limited funds and producing world-class results in its output. It is certainly in demand for its expertise all around the world. I would like to confine my remarks on the Civil Aviation Amendment Bill to two things—firstly, the performance of CASA over the last five years and my passionate belief that unless there are changes very soon we will see an immediate decline in general aviation. The previous speaker spoke about general aviation, but he was actually referring to regular public transport services. I mean general aviation, the flying, training and light charter sector of Australia’s aviation, and I have serious concerns about its future. I would also like to raise an issue that was raised with me only yesterday and which I am currently exploring—that is, a submission that the Sydney Airports Corporation made to the government’s green paper about regional airline slots into Sydney Airport and some concerns that they may be the architects of those slots. The access and the costings may be changed to force or encourage regional airlines that service my electorate and many other regional areas, particularly in New South Wales, such as Rex, to land at Bankstown, which is something that has come up before. I do not see it as government policy, but it is being raised again and I think it needs to be addressed.

On the matter of CASA, prior to speaking on the bill today I contacted many people that I know in the aviation industry, an industry that I was involved in myself many, many years ago. I was disturbed and distressed to hear their reports. I know that if we look at CASA and its role we would have to say, ‘Well done for keeping Australia’s skies safe.’ I do not want to detract from that, because if CASA sees its role, and government sees its role, as primarily doing that then it has achieved that and achieved it well. But if you look at the performance of the organisation in terms of its operation, its process and its relationships, I hear that it is lacking in leadership and it has no accountability. The important thing about a board is that it will now be accountable to this board. People have described the last five years of CASA as a total disaster, with no clear objectives, no engagement with industry, and as a situation where general aviation now has almost no chance of survival. I think five years ago it had a limited chance of survival, but now—and I see this around me, too—in regional areas its chance of survival is pretty dismal.

I must say that I have heard reports that in the last four to five months CASA has made an attempt to re-engage with industry—I think this concerns particularly its testing and checking procedures—but the point is that if CASA treats a small general aviation operator in the same way that it treats Qantas it will price that operator out of existence. I know there are other issues. They concern the age of aeroplanes—we do have an ageing aircraft fleet—the cost for the average person to learn to fly and to get into GA, the cost of fuel, landing fees and charges at local airports. These expenses were not there in 1982, when I learnt to fly.

I believe that CASA has a role in mentoring and engaging with general aviation—and not just for general aviation’s stake, which is important to understand. The travelling public will think: ‘That’s good. People like to fly. It’s a great hobby or occupation and maybe it can lead to something more, but it’s sort of separate from what we’re doing here in the big airlines’—but it is not. And no more clearly was this demonstrated than the recent accident in the States where an extraordinarily experienced pilot carried out a landing on a frozen river and everybody got out of the plane. I am in no way suggesting that every pilot that flies an airline around the world is going to have that level of experience, but it does indicate that, where that experience exists, the people on that aircraft can have confidence, and that the most important people in any aircraft are the pilot and the co-pilot. That is the role of general aviation—to train people so that, when they do get into those positions, they have sufficient experience of the real world in aviation to meet any contingency. Where you have a lack of expertise in pilots you make up for it with flight management systems, with almost automated buttons that you press to take off, land and taxi—it is not quite like that, but when I see modern aircraft I am amazed. You can, to a certain extent, make up for that lack of expertise.

But unless we have a strong general aviation sector that feeds pilots to the next level of regional airlines like Rex, feeds them to the next level of bigger domestic airlines, carriers like Qantas and Virgin, and then of course to international airlines, we will have pilots pulled very rapidly through the system and we will have the situation, as we did recently—and ironically the global financial crisis and the reduction in demand probably means that this effect is now being slowed—where the pilot had 3,000 hours flying time and the co-pilot had 1,500 hours. Yes, they have done the training. Yes, they have spent all that time in the simulator. Yes, they are very smart and they are very good people. But they do not have the depth of experience.

I believe that CASA have killed general aviation. They would probably say, ‘Well, it wasn’t our role to support it and it wasn’t our role to mentor it. Our role is keep the skies safe.’ Yes, that is their No. 1 role—but they could also have carried out these other objectives; it would only have enhanced the status of the organisation and the job that they have to do into the future. I do not seek to make these remarks in a political sense because I am talking about five years ago, but I am desperately concerned about the state of general aviation and its survival. Now people who would like to pursue a career in aviation are simply priced out of it—as are the flying schools; I heard of another one closing the other day. Its operator said to me, ‘I can’t work in a not-for-profit organisation any longer.’ I understand that. He said he would need to not only upgrade his 30-year-old aircraft but also face the costs of complying with CASA’s requirements, which would be extremely onerous.

I think I have mentioned in this place before other flying schools who have wanted simple things—for example, to put an aircraft on their AOC that they already had and that was well known to CASA. The cost of actually achieving that transfer of one line on a piece of paper is in the thousands of dollars. Renewing your instructor rating takes half a day—to have the person come down from CASA and do the testing and the checking—and costs $1,600. The costs are enormous. Again, CASA would say, ‘Well, it’s not our job to understand the costs of a small regional based general aviation operation in training and charter,’ but it needs to understand the effect that its actions have on those organisations. Those who are interested in aviation now are simply going to get into the recreational aviation type of flying, which are not VH registered aircraft. They are managed by a completely separate body and therefore do not link in closely to CASA. They are allowed to regulate themselves. That will be a fun, hobby type activity but I do not think it will lead easily into training pilots for the future; and that is the problem.

The other remarks I would like to make concern regional aviation slots into Sydney’s airport. I received an email yesterday from the Broken Hill City Council. It read as follows:

You will be aware that Sydney Airport Corporation Limited (SACL), in its recent comments on the Federal Government’s Green Paper on aviation policy, made a strong submission that regional air services should be relocated to Bankstown and/or the current quarantined regional slots at Sydney airport should be released to the larger airlines.

Council is completely opposed to such a suggestion and submits that SACL have an obligation to continue to provide access to Sydney Airport for regional passengers as a condition of purchase of the original lease from the Government.

Council requests that you make urgent representations to the Minister for Transport and Regional Services to ensure that regional airline passengers retain dedicated access to Sydney airport and the regions remain “open for business” at this critical time for regional communities.

I note the minister at the table, so that is part 1 of my submission to the minister. This has been a longstanding issue between Sydney Airport Corporation and Regional Express. Going back to parliamentary debates in New South Wales between 2003 and 2004, the issue was raised quite often. A previous minister in this place, John Anderson, replied to concerns that were raised in September 2004 as follows:

We have a long standing policy of guaranteeing regional airline access to Sydney Airport which includes not only quarantined slots through the Sydney Airport Demand Management Act but also access to adequate terminal apron facilities. This policy is non-negotiable and will be enforced if necessary.

If that were still the government’s policy, I would take comfort. I call on the government to emphasise to regional commuters that that is still its policy.

I have reviewed the submission that Sydney Airport Corporation made in response to the government’s aviation green paper to see what they actually said. Certainly they made the following point:

Price controls have not been subject to review for a decade. They continue to operate to hold prices for regional users at artificially low levels, cause cross subsidies from other airport users and act as a disincentive for investment in regional facilities. The extent of the pricing distortion is evidenced by the fact that the cost of operating a regional aircraft through Sydney Airport is now significantly lower than at Bankstown Airport. For example, a Saab 340 aircraft carrying 20 passengers … would incur landing and terminal charges at Bankstown Airport that were 31% higher than at Sydney Airport.

Cost is always a factor but I honestly do not think any regional passengers want to land at Bankstown airport. The issue is not the cost to the aircraft of landing at Sydney versus landing at Bankstown. Many passengers simply would not travel if the aircraft landed at Bankstown. An upgrade would be required there. Obviously the runway length and pavement strength is sufficient but an upgrade would be required for terminal facilities, for security, for fire measures et cetera. That would be enormous. So what I am saying to Sydney Airport Corporation is: you may feel you are stuck with the regional ring-fence and you may not like it but it is something that, I believe, you are going to have to live with.

If we look at the number of regional passengers that are coming into Sydney, we see that it is not as big as the number of international passengers. The submission that SACL makes talks about the dollars that Australia receives notionally from international travellers versus regional travellers. Of course it is going to be a lot more from an aircraft that contains 200, 300 or 400 people. It makes the point that it is a major contributor to the Australian economy. For every 747 that arrives at Sydney airport $1.8 million is contributed to the Australian economy and every A380 contributes $2.2 million. The submission says:

It is therefore in Australia’s national economic interest to encourage more international flights to Australia.

Maybe it is; but not at the expense of regional flights and not at the expense of access to Sydney for the citizens of Australia’s regional cities such as those in my electorate of Farrer. When one reads these type of submissions it is almost as if there are two worlds: the city world and the country world. I have never accepted that there is. There is a significant interlocking of those two groups and if we freeze out regional travellers from Sydney then we do so much more to exacerbate the city-country divide—and I do not think that is what anyone in this place would want to see happen.

The regional airlines flying in and out of Sydney airport at the moment include Air Link, which is a member of the Rex group, which flies from Sydney to Mudgee, Bathurst, Dubbo, Coonamble, Walgett, Lightning Ridge, Bourke and Cobar. Rex flies from Sydney to Albury, Ballina, Broken Hill, Dubbo, Grafton, Griffith, Lismore, Melbourne, Merimbula, Moruya, Narrandera, Leeton, Orange, Parkes, Taree and Wagga Wagga. It is an issue of enormous significance for us in western New South Wales that the government does not accept the views of SACL and increase the cost of landing or decrease the timeslots available or the access into Sydney airport or do anything to encourage regional airlines to relocate to Bankstown, with all of the problems that that would involve. It is extremely important that that does not happen. I am pleased that the minister was here to listen to the first part of what I said and hopefully he now has that on his radar screen.

For a community like Broken Hill, the airline is everything—it is for every reasonably remote community, but Broken Hill is quite a large town and it is only serviced by Rex. The flight in and out is a major part of the activity of the town, because if you miss the aircraft there is often not another one and the flights are often completely fully booked. When they run late you have all the ramifications that anyone who has a flight running late or who misses a flight has—it is tiresome and a nuisance et cetera. Multiply all that by more when you are in Broken Hill. If it happened to me in Albury, I would just jump in the car or drive to Melbourne or get the next flight or change from Rex to Qantas or Virgin et cetera. But in Broken Hill you cannot do that. Rex services the town and if you miss the flight you do not have any other options, because it takes hours to drive to anywhere where there is another one. You basically have to cancel what you were going to do. So it is important that the end result, after the white paper, is not that regional airlines have to fly into Bankstown or that services are reduced because demand is reduced. Remember, I do not believe that many passengers want to go to Bankstown. The public transport is not nearly as good as it is at Mascot. Anyway, why should regional Australians have a second-class service? Why should we not be able to fly into Mascot airport to do a day’s business in the city, just like anybody else? It is extremely important and I appreciate the opportunity to raise that in the context of this debate.

In summary, I return to the matter of CASA and its board. Clearly, from my previous remarks, I am in support of a board. I do not think ministerial accountability was the right way to go. I think that put too much pressure on the minister. There were good arguments for and against and many of them were made by the Leader of the Nationals in his earlier speech. My personal view has always been that accountability to a board makes an organisation like CASA be more accountable, and we clearly need that when we look at its troubled history. The board needs to be skills based, and I note that it will be. It desperately needs to have people that have a depth of experience in both general and regular public transport aviation in this country. I know that you can have a good mix of skills on a board and sometimes there are skills that may not be aviation related, but where possible I really believe that we need to have the two together. Everyone who has experience in an industry thinks that they understand the industry and that people who have not worked in it do not. I know that. Sometimes it is useful to have a perspective from right outside an industry. But I do believe that CASA has suffered in the past by having a leadership that has not had the depth, breadth and strength of experience in aviation—not just the airlines. So I look forward to the appointments on that board and I look forward to a brighter future for CASA.

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