Aviation Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul Business Association (AMROBA) Executive Director Ken Cannane has issued a call for the Civil Aviation Act to be changed to enshrine Forsyth reforms permanently.
In a newsletter released earlier this month, Cannane said the hard-won reforms needed to be made permanent once implemented.
"Without doubt, there has been almost unanimous support in the aviation industry for the recommendations of the ASRR(Forsyth) report," Cannane said. "The government and industry obviously support these recommendations, so when will the Department of Infrastructure and the CASA Board initiate changes to the Civil Aviation Act to implement these recommendations permanently?
"The [CASA] Board and [Department of] Infrastructure must recommend changes to change the regulatory style. The Act must be amended to implement the government supported ASRR recommendations.
According to Cannane, the Act badly needs an overhaul if we are to avoid another round of reviews into the function of CASA.
"The Act was rushed together to create the CAA back in 1988 and has a series of ad-hoc amendments. NZ realises that after 20 years, the Act should be reviewed, so when will Australia set up a review of the Act against international treaties and applicability to the current aviation industry?
"CASA and aviation continually have review after review with no permanent result – regulatory review has been under way since the formation of the CAA in 1988. The rest of the aviation world are modernising their requirements utilising performance based regulations and standards and utilising a risk based approach.
"The USA is well ahead of Australia as we implement draconian requirements of the past. Changes must happen. Many businesses that have spanned a few regimes of CASA and its predecessors, are not confident that permanent change will happen until the government support and direction to the CASA Board and DAS is given legislative support in the Act."
AMROBA has been active in trying to mitigate issues arising out of CASR Part 145 (maintenance organisations), which resulted in the Manual of Standards being disallowed in the senate in March this year. According to Senator Nick Xenophon, had the MoS been allowed, it may have made it illegal for engineers to do maintenance they'd been doing safely for years.