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

As Senator Ronaldson rightly says, it is just bizarre. What is perhaps even more bizarre is that, although the motion was introduced on Monday and it is now Thursday, as I understand it, it is not going to be dealt with this afternoon either. So what was that all about?

One can only surmise that Mr Albanese was playing games with this to try and support his announcement on security issues, supposedly, which was rushed forward earlier this week to try and take a bit of heat off the government’s complete mismanagement of the Home Insulation Program, that fiasco—to try and save Mr Garrett’s political skin by diverting attention from Mr Garrett to security matters. We all know those security measures were rushed forward. The government has been sitting on them for months, I understand, and had not intended to do much about them. But, hello, Mr Rudd has a political problem, so what does he do? He creates some spin that will hopefully capture the attention of the news cycle—it does not matter what the real policy issues are; that does not seem to count—and away we go. We can only surmise that, as part of this spin to try and save Mr Garrett, this motion was introduced into the Senate to be dealt with. But, as I say, here we are at the end of the week and we are none the wiser as to why it was introduced now, and it seems the government is now not going to proceed with it. It is still on the Notice Paper, but the word is that it will not be dealt with this afternoon.

Even if it were to be dealt with this afternoon, one would still wonder why this motion was brought forward. This is a motion to rescind a disallowance motion passed by the Senate 5½ months ago. One still wonders why this was not left until we next come back. We are away for a week after this and then we are back for a couple of weeks. By that time, the six months will be up and, if the government want to introduce it, they can do it then—without needing to bring forward this rescission motion for the disallowance by the Senate.

When this motion appeared on the Notice Paper, a lot of people became concerned. The coalition, as at the last time I spoke with Mr Truss, had not been able to garner from Mr Albanese what the purpose of this was. Were the government intending to bring back the same regulation that had already been disallowed or was there some other purpose to this? Mr Albanese was not forthcoming, which I understand is normal. Certainly, it did raise concerns with people with a particular interest in this area—and who could have a greater interest in this area than the Australian and International Pilots Association. On 23 February, they published a media release which says:

The Federal Government’s reintroduction of changes to the Australian Aviation Transport Regulations preventing licensed pilots accessing the flight deck and transferring legal liability from airlines to pilots could decrease air safety …

Pilots are concerned that the Regulations, which were developed with minimal consultation—

and I interpose there: are we surprised about that? As we know, the Rudd government are big on talk. They say, ‘We’re consulting with all relevant stakeholders,’ but when you look behind the words you will find that most of the consultation in any field of policy endeavour is pretty limited. As I was saying, the AIPA media release says:

… the Regulations, which were developed with minimal consultation or expert input by pilots and were last year defeated in the Senate, may be reintroduced in the same form and that this may result in poor quality outcomes.

It goes on to say:

Legal advice prepared by one of Australia’s leading Senior Counsel, Brett Walker, also confirmed AIPA’s view that the new regulations were both inappropriate and unnecessary.

“Shifting criminal responsibility to the pilot in command undermines a long held aviation principle that the airline is ultimately responsible for the actions of its pilots,” …

“Any other approach risked allowing airlines to claim they were blameless for accidents and incidents.”

The media release goes on to say:

The association has also commissioned an independent risk specialist to investigation the Regulation’s premise that pilots travelling in flight deck jump seats were a safety and security threat.

This was the argument the Rudd government used when they tried to impose this regulation on the industry. They said that a pilot flying the plane when he is the captain in charge is quite okay but if he happens to be getting a lift somewhere in the jump seat he suddenly became a safety and security threat. Whereas, of course, international evidence shows that in many cases a pilot in the jump seat, a third pilot in an aircraft, has actually assisted in avoiding incidents and, indeed, in making air travel safer. The media release from the pilots association goes on to say:

“The results of this detailed, independent study clearly found that having an additional licensed pilot on the flight deck enhanced safety and security, which is hardly surprising, because if you can’t trust pilots on the flight deck, who can you trust,” Captain Barry Jackson said.

It is another one of these silly things that the Rudd government have introduced. They do it without proper consultation. They have come forward with legislation and regulations to capture, as I say, the new cycle spin. I would not do this but someone down Senator Ronaldson’s way at a country cabinet meeting recently referred to the Prime Minister as Prime Minister Blah Blah. Of course I would not call him that because I know it is unparliamentary. Obviously this person who attended the country cabinet meeting was less than impressed.