Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Industry, Infrastructure and Industrial Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Airspace Bill 2006 and the Airspace (Consequentials and Other Measures) Bill 2006. The primary focus of the bills is to transfer the function of airspace regulation from Airservices Australia to the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, CASA. The Labor Party support this in principle, and so we will be supporting these bills.

The Airspace Bill 2006 will ultimately address the perception that a conflict of interest exists between the roles of Airservices as both a commercial air navigation service provider and the regulator of the level of service to be provided. This change is acceptable in terms of our support. The bill will then require the minister to make an Australian airspace policy statement on the administration and regulation of, and policy objectives for, Australian administered airspace. Labor welcome this as it has been one of the key areas in which problems have arisen. It will mean that, for the first time, the minister will have to do something about this public policy area, which will involve CASA. He will have to look at a number of issues that have arisen out of the roles that Airservices Australia and CASA play. Unfortunately, since the minister was appointed, he has shied away from these issues.

There are a number of very serious problems lying within the confines of CASA and its role that need to be resolved. I think we would acknowledge that these problems are very serious and ought to be attended to and that they cannot be solved by the minister or through his office alone. The Labor Party have outlined on a number of occasions in the Senate and in this place our belief that these problems are of such a serious nature that they ought to be considered by a Senate committee. We ought to have appropriate powers to do a proper and thorough investigation.

Labor have been seeking a full inquiry into the Civil Aviation Safety Authority. This position, which we believe is a reasonable one, has been on the record for a long time. Why do we want an inquiry? Because we have very serious and grave concerns about CASA’s performance and the fact that Australians are slowly losing faith in Australia’s aviation safety regime. This simply translates into people losing confidence in flying. That is unacceptable. I have spoken before in this House about the perception and the reality of air safety in Australia and about how it ought to be treated with the utmost importance. It should be front of mind in the minister’s actions and statements and in the conduct of the regulators responsible for this area.

There has also been a lot of public concern about why these issues have not been examined in detail by a parliamentary committee. The reason may appear simple on the surface, but the government has a majority in both houses and has the power and capacity to deal with this if it wants to. The government could come into this place today and set up a full inquiry to deal with some very serious issues of safety in Australia. It would be very welcome, but the government refuses to do that.

People might make value judgements about why the government refuses to acknowledge these problems and to act on them. Labor proposes that when this bill is considered in the Senate it should be referred to a committee. Such a committee should look at not just the Lockhart River tragedy but also the performance of CASA. The government’s ability to block such a move by using its Senate majority is wrong. The government should not block such an inquiry; it should move on and allow it to happen.

The Lockhart disaster could have been avoided but for CASA’s incompetence, and a number of issues are outstanding. If people disagree with that statement, there is an opportunity for an inquiry and we can find out whether that statement is right or wrong. There is the challenge for government: if the government believes that the statement I have just made is not true, it should set up a full inquiry. Let us find out whether or not it is right. People need to know whether CASA’s incompetence needs to be rectified to avoid any other tragedies in our skies in the future.

People need to feel confident that all that can be done is being done and that any actions or inactions of CASA will not be repeated in the future. To give some historical background, it was back in 2001 that CASA first knew about the ongoing compliance and structural problems of Transair but still did nothing about them. They were informed. CASA is supposed to be our safety regulator, an organisation entrusted with the safety of the flying public. Australia’s safety record is very good; I believe it is second to none. However, that is not to say that we cannot ever improve. Measures need to be taken to prevent such tragedies from happening because of the same structural regulatory problems. I think there is more that can be done.

Four years later, in May 2005, a Transair aircraft was involved in the tragic Lockhart River crash, in which 15 people were killed. This crash had many implications, not just for the ongoing conduct of CASA but also for the devastated families affected by this disaster. These families are still seeking answers as to why this happened in the first place. There is a perception amongst the families that this government is not interested in putting into place a full inquiry, which would give them confidence and a better understanding of what happened. It is beyond comprehension that this government could not understand the grief of the families and what they are going through. Its failure to understand the concerns of the flying public and to set up a full investigation, giving the power to the parliament to take on that investigation, is simply wrong.

These people feel they have been betrayed by the government, which has refused to do the decent thing about this very serious matter. The issue should be referred to a committee to be dealt with fully. I would like the members of the government to sit and think for a moment about what Shane Urquhart, the father of Sally Urquhart, one of the victims of this tragedy, had to say about this issue. Mr Urquhart told AAP that a decision to block this inquiry would ‘show the government has no compassion and no concern for its citizens getting justice, and lacks the guts to question anything CASA does’.

Questions about CASA and air safety are long running. The issues have been biting at the government for some time. For the life of me, I cannot understand why this government refuses to go down the obvious path—refuses to take action. I am not accusing the government of anything specific, but questions are raised in your own mind when you see that an obvious course of action needs to be taken and the government refuses to take it even though it has the power to do so. When you do not get sufficient answers from ministers or people responsible, you do start to question what it is that the government does not want to find out. Why is this government refusing to have a full inquiry? What is it that it does not want to know? Perhaps it is something it already knows. I do not know what that is, and I am not claiming to have some sort of great knowledge of what that might be, although I have some ideas. However, I wonder what it is that the government may already know but does not want recorded or fully investigated. That is the only possible, logical conclusion that members of this place, the public and the families affected by that tragedy can make.

This government has the power to do the right thing—to ensure that the Lockhart River tragedy does not happen again, that the problems are rectified. Until there is a full inquiry—until this place takes on its responsibility—and until the minister does what the minister is charged to do, many people will be left very unsatisfied.

There are no hidden agendas here. The families who have been torn apart are not seeking retribution or revenge; they are seeking closure. They are seeking some finalisation of this. They want to know what happened. They want to know why it happened. They want to know how it happened. They want to know that it will not happen to anybody else. That is what the families want to know. They want closure. That is an acceptable thing to demand of a government.

We want to see the same thing. We want to know what is going on. We want to know what is wrong with CASA. Why isn’t a full investigation being carried out? Those are the questions I have. I am sure the minister has a view; I would be happy to hear those views, and maybe a further explanation as to why the minister is not doing anything in this area worth talking about. We need to get the full details of the Lockhart River tragedy. I think the only way we can do that is through a full inquiry—and, most importantly, before we move ahead with this bill to have the functions and role of the airspace regulator handed over to CASA. We need to have a proper path to understand the roles and responsibilities of both these organisations and to ensure that there will be a renewed confidence in the roles of both Airservices Australia and CASA, so that we know we are safe in the skies, that the regulations in place are sound and that this government has done everything it possibly can, has not left any stone unturned and will not turn a blind eye to that tragedy or to anything that might happen in the future. We support the bill in principle, but we have grave concerns about any actions of CASA in relation to air safety, and most particularly we have concerns about the actions of this government in its refusal to have a full inquiry.

David Fawcett (Wakefield, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Airspace (Consequentials and Other Measures) Bill 2006, which contains a number of amendments to the Civil Aviation Act 1988, consequent to the Airspace Bill 2006. This bill amends the act to make sure that airspace regulation is clear and a separate function for the Civil Aviation Safety Authority and that CASA acts consistently with the Australian Airspace Policy Statement, described in the Airspace Bill 2006. The bill also makes a number of technical amendments to the Air Services Act 1995 and the Civil Aviation Act 1988 to accommodate amendments made to the functions of Airservices Australia by the Civil Aviation Legislation Amendment Act 2003.

I would like to talk about some of the context of the bill, because aviation has been a vital and integral part of life in Australia since aviation started, from World War I and post that, to the development of mail services and Qantas and other names that we all know, such as the Flying Doctor Service. It remains an important part of the way we do business. Australia has been a world leader in aviation both technically and administratively over a number of years. Currently we manage and provide air traffic services to some 11 per cent of the earth’s surface, which, given our population, is a huge amount of airspace to look after.

In recent years there has been much contention about airspace, particularly since 2002, when the government instituted a process to look at the National Airspace System, which was designed to align Australia’s airspace classification system with that of the internationally recognised system of the International Civil Aviation Organisation, ICAO. A number of characteristics of NAS have been implemented: stage 1 and stages 2a, 2b and 2c, and an additional June 2005 stage. These include a number of things that affect different categories of aircraft: VFR, IFR, IFBT et cetera.

Ongoing change will be a feature of airspace management. In 2003 ICAO released a further document with a global air traffic management operational concept. They are looking to the future to see how we can better align and integrate airspace systems from a world perspective. A large driver of this is technology, particularly as we move from ground based systems, some of which had their origins in Australia but many of which date back some 50 years to space based systems, which increase accuracy as well as capacity. I talk of things such as the automatic dependent surveillance broadcast, ADS-B, system that has been in use in various parts of the world for a while now, but recently it has become a serious option for widespread use as a surveillance and traffic management tool.

Given these developments in technology overseas, it is appropriate that Australia has an ongoing process of reviewing and managing its airspace. Having been involved in the consultations post the 2002 decision, from the operational side, I am pleased to see that the government has been consulting closely with industry on airspace and that it has heard the clear message that industry has been sending: that there are very clear supporters for, and very clear detractors of, the National Airspace System. The government has chosen to continue with reform but has made sure that we have a robust method of consultation in place. I believe that is very important because the last thing we need in Australia is ongoing division and the distraction from the prime consideration of having a safe and effective airspace management system. Things like the date of 25 November 2004 just caused huge ructions in the aerospace industry, with people either pro or against going ahead with airspace changes on that date.

The consultations are important because there is a wide range of users in Australia, from the home-built and sport and recreational type categories through to warbirds and general aviation, which for many years has been the bedrock of aviation in Australia and remains one of the prime means of both doing business and having personal transport for people in rural and remote areas. There are also the charter and training type operations, the corporate and regular public transport and, importantly, Defence—not only the operational side of Defence but the training and the test and evaluation side, which does not get a lot of airplay in public but is of significant impact on airspace use in Australia. Other stakeholders are ICAO, obviously, and overseas users. From a systems perspective, we need to understand that airspace does not work in isolation and that we need to consider what other things are in place to support the rules and procedures that we put in place.

I hark back to my own experience of flying in the UK, where radar coverage was essentially universal—even at very low levels—across the country. That provides for a very different airspace environment in terms of what is possible compared to what we have in Australia, where we do not have that same kind of coverage. So the discussion of airspace alone is not sufficient. We need to consider who the users are, what outcomes they require and the other enabling elements that actually make the system as a whole safe and effective. I use the word ‘effective’ deliberately there. ‘Efficient’ is often the word that is used, but efficiency sometimes is to the detriment of safety and effectiveness. I believe that safety and effectiveness have to be the two elements that underpin any move in or development of our airspace system here in Australia.

As I said, Australia has been an early adapter of technology and innovation and whilst it is important that we look to align with ICAO, alignment does not imply a direct replica. It does not mean that we will look exactly the same as any other system in the world. We can still align whilst allowing for unique operational considerations in Australia and also allow the space for people to be innovative in the use and take-up of technology. That means that the consultation process needs to be open and accountable. Many of the critics of the developments since 2002 point to the fact that, at some of the consultations, people spoke but there was a question as to whether those various groups were heard. The saying about babies and bathwater is often applied to some of the decisions that appeared to have been taken at the end of some of those consultation processes.

I believe it is important that future consultations involve the stakeholders at an operational level and not be satisfied to just look at the executive summary, if I can use that example. For example, the NAS has been described as very effective in the United States and the military there think it is fine; therefore it reads across that the military here should be happy with it. Having worked with the US military in the aviation sector, I am aware that there are many elements of the NAS that they consistently look for workarounds for because they find it does not actually suit their purposes, but they cannot change it and so they find these workarounds. It is important that the consultation process does go below the executive summary level and actually finds out what the operators from each of the various stakeholder groups need so that they can have outcomes that are both safe and effective for their operations. What I am really looking for is a balance in that consultation process so that the realities of the operational environment are captured in our regulation.

Another example where the concept is good but the reality is different is in the United Kingdom where CAP 723, issued by their Civil Aviation Authority in collaboration with the Ministry of Defence, defines something called purple airspace which is airspace that is declared for royal and VIP flights. It is fantastic if you are flying there in a military environment. They will advise you when a purple airspace corridor is declared and you adjust your flying program for the day accordingly to make sure there is an adequate protective bubble for those VIP or royal aircraft. Where that falls down is that whilst you are evacuating that piece of airspace, a civilian VFR aircraft could blunder straight on through and could even formate off one of the royal helicopters if it wanted to. The safety outcome intended is not delivered because of the realities on the ground of how people operate. I think it is important that when we put together a system here we align it with ICAO and make sure that we are compatible, but also that we take account of the operational realities for aviation operations in Australia. I am thinking particularly here of taking account of how people operate outside controlled airspace in rural and remote areas.

In conclusion, I am happy to support this bill. I think the Civil Aviation Safety Authority is the appropriate agency because I believe airspace, at the end of the day, is about safe and effective operations. I believe that the transfer from Airservices Australia to CASA, with that reporting direct to the minister, is appropriate. What we are talking about here is a system that will use an Australian risk management framework and give some certainty to industry and because CASA has a regulatory function, rather than a corporate function, I believe that in terms of governance it is a better place for that. The Office of Airspace Regulation will have decision-making powers for regulating airspace around Australia and I believe that CASA is the appropriate place to have that oversight. I support the bill.

Martin Ferguson (Batman, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Primary Industries, Resources, Forestry and Tourism) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to make a few comments this morning on the Airspace Bill 2006 and the Airspace (Consequentials and Other Measures) Bill 2006. As the shadow parliamentary secretary for transport, the member for Oxley, has stated, the opposition supports the bill as it provides for the transfer of airspace regulation and administration from Airservices Australia to the Civil Aviation Safety Authority, which is an appropriate policy decision. The bill also requires the relevant minister to outline an Australian airspace policy statement which should provide certainty for industry, particularly in view of significant changes to technology currently being instituted within Australia and across the globe. This statement will require major changes to Australian airspace to be subject to risk analysis, detailed examination of the potential costs and benefits, and stakeholder consultation.

This is a pertinent issue to debate here in the parliament today, as the residents of Canberra are currently debating the issue of noise sharing resulting from potential airspace use over the city. I intend to make some comments on this very serious issue as part of this debate on airspace. It is also an issue highly relevant to my portfolio as the shadow minister for tourism and also a former shadow minister for transport, infrastructure and regional development. If anything, I have been part of this ongoing debate about the future operation of Canberra airport for some time.

No resident of Canberra could not have noticed Canberra International Airport’s current multimedia campaign to raise awareness of the potential adverse impact of aircraft noise on community health and lifestyle and house and land values. This is a current debate which the New South Wales government has to resolve in a proper, constructive and transparent way. This campaign has been launched by the airport in response to a proposal by Queanbeyan City Council to rezone land to enable the construction of thousands of homes on rural land at Tralee under the airport’s arrival and departure flight paths. It is obviously about airspace. The campaign seeks to highlight the realities of the noise sharing that is set to become a sad, everyday fact of life for Canberra residents if the New South Wales government and Queanbeyan City Council continue to agree to developer demands which would lead to 10,000 people living under Canberra flight paths.

The airport has a long history of working with the community. That partnership has been aimed at reducing the impact of flight path noise along with substantial investments by airlines such as Qantas in noise abatement solutions. As a consequence, 99.5 per cent of Queanbeyan and Canberra residents are protected from aircraft noise. This is a fact of life that people in other cities of Australia—larger cities such as Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney—envy. This is especially important to the member for Lowe, who has to live with this problem as a result of the operation of Sydney airport. It would be a shame, therefore—if anything, a disaster—if such a desired arrangement was ripped away from Canberra residents as a result of short-term decisions by Queanbeyan council and the New South Wales government acting in the interests of a particular developer.

Qantas has already appropriately and correctly indicated that it would be unlikely to continue to invest in further abatement measures if the operational and community incentives in the existing flight procedures were to be compromised by such a proposal. The current situation is, appropriately, opposed by the ACT government—and for good reason. Why would the ACT government want to jeopardise a win-win situation by allowing Canberrans to share aircraft noise when it is not fundamentally necessary?

There is no question that, if rezoning proceeds and the developers get their way to develop right underneath the southern flight path, the residents of the new developments there would be subject to aircraft noise. They should be aware of this if this rezoning is allowed to continue, for they are potentially purchasing dud land—land that will be subject to serious aircraft noise in the future. I bet the developers are not telling potential residents these facts.

It is absolutely inevitable that, over time, pressure would be brought to bear by those residents to have other people share the noise burden. That is what occurs in other cities such as Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. It has also been an ongoing problem in Adelaide and Perth. This is an issue that has already been foreshadowed by Airservices Australia. Why should Canberrans be forced to compensate for poor planning decisions by New South Wales state and local governments? There is another bill which goes to the operation of airports, the Airports Amendment Bill 2006, which is on the table today for further debate this afternoon.

The absurdity of the current situation with Canberra airport is all the more crazy given that there is an alterative area in Googong identified as suitable for residential development. This was put forward as a viable solution by an independent panel of inquiry strongly recommending against residential rezoning on land underneath current flight paths. I say to the New South Wales Minister for Planning, Mr Sartor: you are obligated to pay serious attention to the recommendation of this independent panel of inquiry. I also say that some people associated with lobbying for this proposed residential development have previously lobbied me, as the former shadow minister for transport, in a most unsavoury way, and regard should be had for this type of action in seeking to achieve their desired outcomes on the development front.

Alternatively, Googong would provide the area with the opportunity to provide upwards of 25 years of land supply to Queanbeyan without any noise impact. That is a win-win situation for the people of Queanbeyan and for Canberra. That is what we should be about: proper planning decisions. The move would not only be a good one for the future residents of Canberra, as they would move into the aircraft-noise-free area of Googong, but would also protect the residents of Queanbeyan from the adverse impact of noise pollution and would prevent the residents of other areas in Canberra from the very real future possibility of noise sharing in response to the proposed new 10,000 residents.

As shadow minister for tourism, I am also seriously concerned about the future viability of a huge Canberra asset: Canberra International Airport. The move to rezone the area of Googong would also protect the operations of one of the territory’s most significant national capital and regional assets: its airport. It is fundamental to the future operation of Canberra. Let us deal with some hard economic facts. Tourism is very important to Canberra and the surrounding areas of New South Wales. Maybe it is about time the New South Wales government not only thought about a partner—the ACT Labor government—but also started to think about the needs of surrounding regional communities, which are their own responsibility beyond the territory of the ACT. Tourism is the largest private sector industry in the ACT, employing about 11,000 people. More importantly, recent tourism figures show that the territory is leading the country with an increase in overnight visitors. Why would a fellow state government put at risk the future of employment and the living standards of the workers who depend on tourism in the ACT and surrounding residential and tourism areas of New South Wales?

Tourism Research Australia data showed the numbers staying overnight in Canberra rose 4.5 per cent for the year ending June. This is clearly a most important statement. It is a statement about the strength of Canberra’s tourism industry at a time of overall national decline in regional tourism. The latest national visitors survey painted a bleak picture of the domestic tourism market, which has been hit by high petrol prices and falling costs for trips abroad. This effectively means that domestic tourism in Australia is doing it tough.

Yet the proposal by the New South Wales government, potentially in partnership with the Queanbeyan council, could have a huge impact on a potentially bright future for tourism in Canberra and surrounding regional areas of New South Wales. With these figures, obviously the ACT went against the trend of declining numbers on the domestic tourism front. There were only two other jurisdictions that recorded a rise ahead of the ACT—Victoria and Western Australia.

I simply say to the News South Wales Minister for Planning, Mr Sartor, and the Queanbeyan council and the developer: think smart; do not think about lining the pockets of one developer, placing at risk the future operation of Canberra airport and potentially undermining an appropriate noise-sharing arrangement that benefits all. Why place all of this at risk to please a self-interested developer? That is the crux of this matter.

Any future noise-sharing arrangement will almost certainly lead to a pathway of increasing operational constraints on Canberra airport in less than 10 years, which will render the existing airport site unsustainable well before its natural life span has expired. If it is deemed that the risk is worthwhile then the New South Wales government, Queanbeyan City Council and the private sector developers of Tralee, Environa and The Poplars should give a guarantee to Australian taxpayers that they will meet any future costs of noise abatement and relocation of airports. It is about saying to people who make planning decisions that if they want to make these decisions, they bear the costs.

It is the responsibility of the Commonwealth to guarantee the future of airports in Australia. But there is also a special responsibility for state and local governments to not undermine the operational efficiency and capacity of regional and city airports with short-term planning decisions, as proposed by the Queanbeyan City Council at Tralee, Environa and The Poplars at this particular point in time. I say in a very serious way to Mr Sartor and the Queanbeyan council: think about the overall good of Canberra and the surrounding area as a community. Do not place at risk the efficient operation of Canberra airport and cause unnecessary aircraft noise problems across the Canberra region as a whole simply to please a self-interested developer. I commend the bill to the House.

John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to support the comments of my friend and colleague the member for Batman, who is the shadow minister for tourism. This rezoning of Googong is wrong. The New South Wales government and the Queanbeyan council are looking after the interests of a developer and not looking after the interests of the people. I know something about that, because I am standing here in federal parliament today by virtue of the fact that the government abandoned the people of Sydney, particularly the inner west, in relation to fair noise-sharing for Sydney airport. The former member for Lowe understood that clearly and resigned from the government. He gave me preferences, and that is why I am standing here.

It makes absolutely no sense to rezone an area residential, with a view to having large planes flying day and night over those houses, just to look after the interests of the proponents of this development in the Canberra area. It makes no sense at all. Planes should be flying over cow paddocks and water. In my experience in Sydney, in my electorate of Lowe in the inner west, we get almost twice as much noise as we were promised by the government because they are more interested in looking after the interests of those people, backed by the Macquarie Bank, who bought the airport for 100 years to maximise profits. As I have said many times in this place, Sydney airport operates very well as a shopping centre and a car park.

I exhort the residents of Canberra and Queanbeyan to look at the history of Sydney airport and the massive expansion that is taking place, particularly since the airport was privatised. Airport noise was not fixed, and nor was there any reasonable expectation that a second airport would be built in Sydney or close to Sydney to take some pressure off Sydney airport. The state government and the Queanbeyan council must think again and defeat this development, otherwise the residents of Canberra and Queanbeyan will be punished for the rest of their days. I commend the Airspace Bill 2006 to the House.

De-Anne Kelly (Dawson, National Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Transport and Regional Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In summing up debate on the Airspace Bill 2006, I would like to thank all of those who have made a contribution. Transferring the airspace regulatory function from Air Services to CASA will address a perceived conflict of interest between Air Services’ service delivery functions and its role as the airspace regulator.

The world is changing, and this bill will ensure that Australia is in a position to take advantage of the benefits that new technologies offer. We are keen to do so in a way that is inclusive of stakeholders and allows them to understand and embrace these changes. The bill will ensure airspace regulatory decisions made by CASA are consistent with government objectives subject to the safety of air navigation. Future reform proposals are to be better backed by solid analysis, including cost benefit and risk analysis.

The safety of air navigation will continue to be the most important consideration. However, CASA will also need to embrace opportunities to enhance efficiency, access, environmental protection and national security without compromising safety. The average pilot will not notice much change as a result of the shift of the regulatory function from Air Services to CASA, as Australia’s current airspace architecture will continue to change incrementally as it did under Air Services. The difference is that the policy, economic, safety and social components of airspace change will be properly and publicly accounted for and the process of airspace change will have been rigorously and transparently analysed.

I want to go to two points that previous speakers have raised. One was the call for an inquiry based on these bills before the House. Upon introducing these bills, the government recommended that they be referred to the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee—so, in fact, that inquiry will proceed. The terms of reference will be determined shortly. There has also been reference made by previous speakers to the accident at Lockhart River. There were a number of points made with regard to this tragedy. However, an inquiry into CASA at this time, as has been suggested, prior to the completion of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau’s investigation and the coroner’s inquiry, would not be appropriate. A motion on this subject has already been debated and was defeated in the Senate on 8 November this year.

As has been mentioned, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau investigation into the Lockhart River tragedy has not yet been finalised, but in the interim reports it has been quite evident that there was no suggestion by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau of any failure by CASA. The interim reports also found that the aircraft was operating normally at the time of the accident and that there was no defect or malfunction evident. CASA is, as one would expect, fully cooperating with the Australian Transport Safety Bureau. We expect that a confidential draft of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau’s final report will be provided directly to those parties that are involved and that there will be a public release of the final report in March 2007.

The department and the government are aware that the Australian Transport Safety Bureau has issued a media release on the nonreporting of safety incidents by Transair. However, it has made it clear that this is a separate safety issue to the fatal accident. There will be an opportunity in March 2007 for all of those who are rightly concerned about this to look into the report clearly. I commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.