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

I rise to continue my remarks on the government response to the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport References Committee report into aviation accident investigations. I would like to make a few general comments first and then go to some of the specific recommendations or responses to recommendations from that investigation.

The first thing I would like to say is that this response has taken too long. Given the significant safety issues at hand, this response has taken too long. I recognise that, between the publishing of the report and this response, we have had a change of government since the election. We have now had a number of inquiries, including things like the Aviation Safety Regulation Review, which was instigated by the current government. So it is not as though there has been no action. But, given that response and given the response that the department indicated that it had prepared for the previous government, the chance that it had to respond before the election and the time from the election until now, its response has taken too long. I think we need to learn from that. Where there is, in particular, a bipartisan committee report that deals with important safety issues, there needs to be a quicker response from both sides of politics to address those.

The response from the government is caveated by a statement that this is the government's initial response and that it is awaiting the outcome of two reviews that are currently underway—one being the Aviation Safety Regulation Review, which I mentioned previously, and the other being an independent peer review established by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau in August 2013. They have asked their equivalent body in Canada to do a peer review. I would like to make some comments about those two activities before I move on to the specific recommendations.

First is the Aviation Regulation Review, being led by Mr David Forsyth. I have been incredibly encouraged by the meetings that I have had with both Mr Forsyth and the other members of that panel—international members from North America and the UK. I have been very encouraged by the openness and willingness of a broad spectrum of Australia's aviation community to engage with that review and by some of the thinking and ideas that have been put forward. I am very much looking forward to seeing that review tabled.

I do express some concern about the peer review by ATSB. I have no concerns with the Canadians. I am sure they will do a very good and thorough job. My concern goes to the issue of oversight when concerns have been raised, in this case by a bipartisan committee report of the Senate, and an agency undertakes to do its own review, sets its own terms of reference and there does not appear to be a check and balance on what those terms of reference include or, more importantly, exclude. The fact is that the Canadians when they were here did not engage with a broad range of stakeholders in the aviation community nor indeed with members of the committee who instigated this report. I have some concerns. I will clearly give them the benefit of the doubt out at this stage and see what is delivered by that review. I do place on record that I do think the process could have incorporated measures to make sure there were checks and balances and that it was far more transparent so that both this Senate and the aviation community could have far more confidence that appropriate measures were being taken and that the issues that were raised in this report were being addressed by the review.

To come to some of the recommendations, the government has supported either in principle or outright the majority of the recommendations, which I am grateful for, but there are some I would like to comment on. Recommendation 7 went to the issue of the qualifications of the chief commissioner and the recommendation that he or she should have an aviation accident background ,in terms of the skill sets and experience. That has not been supported on the basis that the ATSB is a multimodal agency and deals with sea, land, rail, et cetera, as well as aviation. The fact remains, though, that there are only two sectors in the world, I believe, that understand complex system safety to world's best practice standard, and they are the aviation sector and the oil and gas sector. To be honest, I would not mind from which of those sectors you brought someone in, but those skill sets need to be there, because neither the maritime sector nor the land sector has developed accident investigation to the same level of complexity and professionalism that the aviation and the oil and gas sectors have. To say that it is a multimodal facility and that we should not get a leader of that organisation with the best possible world's best practice is to do a disservice to those other modes of transport, as well as critically undermining what that agency provides to the aviation sector. I would be quite happy to remove the word 'aviation' and replace it with 'appropriately complex systems safety skill sets'. I do not mind if they come from the oil and gas sector, but the chief commissioner should have that background to lead that agency.

With respect to recommendation 10, I understand that the words there and the sentiment that the agency is the one charged with deciding whether to reopen the case. My concern is that advice has been provided to the government which is the same advice that was provided to the committee—that there was no new evidence which would justify the reopening of the case. ATSB, in their own evidence provided to the committee, indicated that their process for investigating an accident looks at the broader organisational and oversight factors as well as the individual actions. In fact, if you look at the diagram in the report, individual actions are only one small part of what they should be looking at. Yet the report predominantly focuses on the actions of the pilot, who, as I have said in this place before, clearly made errors of judgement on that night but the report dispenses with three-quarters of the subject matter that ATSB's own processes said they should be looking at. It dispenses with it in one sentence that said that everything was good—the regulator was overseeing the company and they were in accordance with the regulations and standards. Yet, in black and white we have the Chambers report, which very clearly showed that the regulator knew at the time the report was done that they had people who were not appropriately trained, they did not have appropriate resources, oversight was not being properly conducted and, had it been so some of the risk factors that were identified after the accident, they would have been picked up and could have been addressed. System safety tells us that those are the things that will help to prevent the errors of an individual leading to a catastrophic accident. I am disappointed to see that response.

Recommendation 12 goes to a new category for EMS and air ambulance operations. I recognise that CASA has issued a notice of proposed rule-making back in August 2013. My discussions with industry indicate that they have some concerns in making those operations transport category. What that will do to their flexibility of operations, I am not sure—I have to confess that I have not spoken to them in recent weeks or months. I am pleased to see some action is being taken, but I do believe it is important that the review that David Forsyth is doing informs the way that these processes are to developed into the future. The response from the government indicated that they thought that industry should not be having a leading role in that; they thought there was a conflict of interest. But I would point out that, when he was the head of CASA, Mr Byron in fact welcomed industry's involvement and made the point that they were probably the most current-subject-matter experts and that CASA should only move away from industry's case if there were a very strong safety case to do so.

I also make the point that there are opportunities for the industry to be involved in the auditing of aviation operations as we see with things like the BARS organisation, an Australian initiative which has now gone worldwide where third party industry players play a key role in auditing. There is no reason that could not be part of a regulatory system. So I welcome the fact that the government has responded; I believe that both governments could have been more timely, given the issues involved. I am looking forward to delivering Mr Forsyth's report and working with government to make sure our aviation sector is both safe and sustainable. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted.