Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

The Aviation Legislation Amendment (2008 Measures No. 2) Bill 2008 continues the work on aviation safety and security commenced by the coalition government, and generally speaking it will be supported by the coalition. Amending the Aviation Transport Security Act to expand the range of information that the department is able to collect is, we believe, a sensible step in ensuring that aviation security is as effective and efficient as possible for all parties. In addition to monitoring compliance with the act, the department will be able to gather information that will enable them to make better informed decisions on security matters.

As the challenges facing aviation security change it is important that our responses adapt so that measures taken to ensure the safety of Australian skies are as effective as possible and do not impose undue costs on industry players, which is of course of paramount importance. The coalition are happy to help ensure that this is the case. The key to the new powers being legislated for in this amendment will be the scope of information collected. I want to assure the Senate and the aviation industry participants that the coalition will ensure that the supporting regulations are subject to scrutiny before they are finalised.

The amendments permitting the secretary of the department to delegate his authority are, we think, a sensible step towards ensuring that the government is able to respond to emergencies in a timely fashion. Thankfully, Australia has had a relatively peaceful record when it comes to aviation security. This is due in no small part to the vigilance of those charged with ensuring a secure environment in the skies and the actions of past governments from both sides of politics over the years. It would be imprudent to discount the possibility of an emergency situation arising in the future. In any such emergency the demands on the secretary would be immense and, in a rapidly developing situation, action may be required without delay. The current legislation only allows the secretary to delegate his authority under the act to another officer within the department. This legislation would enable the secretary to delegate his authority to an officer in any other department with national security responsibilities. Such a delegation would not be taken lightly. The secretary can still retain overall authority under the proposed legislation, can set restrictions on the delegation and can withdraw it when the emergency passes. These amendments would ensure that if Australian skies faced a prolonged emergency, whether it was a pre-planned situation or not, our aviation security apparatus would not be left in a position where decisions vital to national security could not be made.

There are amendments allowing for copying of cockpit voice recorder information for testing and maintenance purposes, and we believe that that deserves bipartisan support. The proposal is the result of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau’s investigation into the tragic Lockhart River air crash up my way in Cape York in 2005. The cockpit voice recorder on the crashed plane was found to be faulty. As a result, no audio recovered from the recorder could be confirmed as having been recorded during the accident flight. The bill will clear any doubt that the copying of cockpit voice recorder information for maintenance purposes is permissible and will enable these kinds of faults to be discovered and dealt with more easily. These amendments were first proposed when the coalition were in government and we are still happy to support them. I understand there may be an amendment in relation to this aspect of the bill; perhaps I will speak more about that in the committee stage.

Finally, the changes proposed to the reporting of aviation incidents and penalties associated with the failure to report such incidents are another idea that the coalition will support. Allowing the executive director of the transport safety investigation to require further information after receiving a report on an immediately reportable matter or a routine reportable matter will ensure that the accident and incident database contains accurate and sufficient information on each immediately reportable matter and routine reportable matter. The penalty for failing to report an immediately reportable matter will be raised to 12 months imprisonment and, as a result, will bypass the statute of limitations and mean that there is no limit to when a prosecution can be instigated. Given the current penalty under the Crimes Act, prosecutions must occur within one year. It can take many years for unreported incidents to be discovered and, as a result, these breaches cannot be prosecuted.

Additionally, under the proposed legislation failing to provide a full written report of an immediately reportable matter or a routine reportable matter will attract a penalty of six months imprisonment and prosecution could begin at any time within six years of the offence. In the case of the Lockhart River air crash in 2005, the failure to report the routine reportable matter was not discovered until many years after the alleged commission of the offences. Failing to report these immediately reportable matters or routine reportable matters can be indicative of a culture that gives safety a low priority. It is important, therefore, to deter such a culture. Increasing the penalties for failing to report or provide full details regarding aviation incidents will maintain this deterrence.

We do have a good aviation industry in Australia and have had for some time, but there are some difficulties with the industry. Certainly the Labor government’s increase of the passenger movement charge from $38 to $47 in Mr Swan’s first budget did cause some difficulties in the airline industry and particularly in the tourism industry up my way around Cairns. Cairns is already struggling with difficulties associated with the cutbacks in both domestic and international services. The global financial crisis, which has been amplified by Kevin’s financial crisis, as I call it—the KFC—has really made it very difficult for the tourism industry, particularly around Cairns. I am distressed that this increase in the passenger movement charge, this additional tax on tourists entering Cairns, has made the industry less competitive and certainly has not been appropriate for the time.

Furthermore, our aviation industry is in many instances typified by the Royal Flying Doctor Service. It celebrated its 80th birthday recently, but during the celebrations the government scrapped critical funding earlier announced by the coalition that would have enabled its services to be expanded. I suspect the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, who has an inner-city Sydney electorate, does not really understand the importance of the Royal Flying Doctor Service to those of us who do not live in the fortunate cities of Australia, but it is a real difficulty. Cutting back its funding was, indeed, unfortunate. Certainly in Queensland the Royal Flying Doctor Service has a major impact on the health and safety of regional communities. We are distressed that there was not more consultation. I am very disappointed that the Queensland Premier, Anna Bligh, did not make more of a song and dance about the cutback in the budget of the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

I am also very disappointed that the Queensland Premier, the Queensland Treasurer or any of the three members of state parliament who represent the Cairns area—or, indeed, the state member who represents the Whitsunday area—did not make more of an objection to Mr Swan, the federal Treasurer, also a Queenslander, about the increases in taxes. One would have thought that the members for Whitsunday, Mulgrave, Cairns and Barron River, who are all Labor members, would have been able to use their personal influence with Mr Swan to stop the impost of this additional tax, which would have such a big impact on the aviation industry and therefore the tourism industry of North Queensland and the Whitsundays.

While we do have a very good aviation industry in Australia and our pioneers—Charles Kingsford Smith, Bert Hinkler, the Reverend John Flynn—did a great deal to bring Australia closer to the world, aviation is a much-needed service for the bush. I am concerned that the Queensland government’s penny-pinching attitude to a regional airline called MacAir has led to its demise. MacAir had the Queensland government contract for servicing remote parts of the state, but they were going broke because the subsidy given by the Queensland government simply was not sufficient to make ends meet. I know that MacAir approached the Queensland government, but to no avail. As a result, MacAir closed its doors and that left many parts of Queensland without a regular air service. Now there has been emergency action taken to try to get a service back, and there has been a replacement service, but all of this would have been unnecessary had the Queensland government had the understanding and fortitude to do something about that before the collapse happened. But it is just another indication of the way Queensland has been mismanaged for several years now.

I want to now talk a little bit about another important aspect of aviation—again, you will excuse me if I relate it particularly to my home state of Queensland. I come from the north. I am familiar with a little town on the Gulf of Carpentaria called Karumba, a great town, a great tourist destination. The so-called grey nomads head there in droves. It is a great fishing spot for recreational fishermen, but a very significant commercial fishing industry also operates at Karumba. It is a community which, with the floods, has been out of road contact with the rest of Australia for almost two months now, I think. If it was any other town in Australia that was cut off by road from the rest of Australia, there would be outrage. You would have the Prime Minister visiting there and making one of his very special media announcements. But this has not happened in the case of Karumba. Karumba is where it is and people understand that, and they do put up with a lot of difficulties because of this. But those difficulties could be overcome if there were a decent airstrip there.