Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Aged Care, Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Hansard source

I am sorry, Senator O’Brien, but you cannot call it a summary. It is not a summary. It is misleading. Reading that document, you would think we are off and running and tidying up what perhaps is a little bit of a problem. I have asked Mr Byron to see whether he thinks CASA has complied with the act by putting these 15 lines up on its website, after finding out that the EVU enumerates there have been ongoing problems for over five years.

Since further publicity of that event has occurred, a further two allegations of improper activity by Transair have been made to me. One has been made anonymously and the other has been made by someone who does not want his name used. I can take those questions to the February estimates and ask them again in an attempt to get some answers out of Mr Gemmell and Mr Byron and then get another round of emails from the families involved and from people who read that transcript. They will say, ‘You poor thing, Jan’—that is what they say to me—‘he will not answer your questions.’ That consistently has been the situation and it is the situation we are in now. We have a group of people who are extremely frustrated. They see an organisation that is intentionally not answering questions and is telling us that Transair has a clean bill of health, when at the same time there are audits of this organisation that show ongoing structural and compliance problems.

It is no wonder that these people have no trust or faith in the system that regulates air safety in this country. It is no wonder that they also are calling on the government to agree to undertake the inquiry that Senator O’Brien’s motion today again calls for. They were furious when the government did not support such a reference earlier this year. If any government senator does not do the right thing and cross the floor today, again they will be furious—and for good reason.

The grief process requires information that will assist people to understand what has happened to the person they love, and this government is ensuring that they cannot access such information. We do not know why that plane went down, but we do know now that CASA knew more in the period leading up to it going down than it has told us. The fact that the government will not allow this inquiry to proceed adds to the frustration of these people and their feeling that their grief is not being accommodated.

The allegations that have been made to me in the last few days go to the training and qualifications of pilots who have flown Transair planes over time. My correspondence states:

CASA is an organisation that accepts no blame for any of their failings—for example, the Seaview Air disaster and the Monarch Airlines fiasco, which are on record in the CASA files. For CASA to put the finger on Transair for the Lockhart crash would be an admission of their own failure to step in prior to the crash. This crash would never have occurred if CASA were conducting a proper surveillance of this operator with respect to crew training standards, which was the cause of the disaster.

I have considerable respect for the person who made this allegation, and that is his view, but it is a view that needs to be tested. I cannot evaluate that allegation. The coroner might do some work to evaluate that allegation but not necessarily, because it goes to the operations of the regulator, CASA. It is my view that the only way we can test this sort of allegation is to conduct a proper Senate inquiry.

The second set of allegations that have been made to me this week go to the cooperation—or, in fact, lack of cooperation—between CASA and ATSB. It concerns me—and this is not the first time I have heard this allegation—that the Australian Transport Safety Bureau, in conducting its inquiry into the disaster, has not had full cooperation from CASA. But I cannot test this until we get to next February’s estimates, when I will ask Mr Gemmell again whether he has been helpful and cooperative with the ATSB, and he will assure me, I am sure, that he is doing everything he can. How do I test that? Then I have to turn up to the ATSB.

This requires a proper inquiry so we can get to the bottom of who is covering up what, or in fact if they are. Certainly, there are a lot of people in North Queensland who think that they are doing just that. Earlier this year, when we moved this reference, no-one from the government spoke; no-one took the opportunity to defend the fact that they were not going to support an inquiry that would have allowed these families some closure. But after that Senator Ian Macdonald came into the chamber and so did Senator Joyce.