– Steve Hitchen
It is unlikely that anyone was ever going to get the infrastructure and transport portfolio other than Ballarat's Catherine King. She was the shadow minister (but that counts for nothing; ask Martin Ferguson) and has been in and around the ministry for much of her career. She was the logical choice and, barring some political machinations, was always going to get the job. And it's no small task King has taken on; the Morrison government committed itself to an infrastructure-led recovery, but the new minister's first tasks were to tell Victorian premier Dan Andrews that there was indeed no pot of gold reserved for Melbourne road projects, and express dissatisfaction with how Infrastructure Australia had been run. With argy-bargy still happening over Western Sydney (Nancy-Bird Walton) Airport and the inland rail project, it is clear it may take time before the next file in King's inbox has "General Aviation" marked on the front. That sentiment has been expressed before, with advocates pleading for instant action now and White Paper later. But King is not alone; Tasmanian senator Carol Brown has been called-up to act as Assistant Minister for Infrastructure and Transport. Between the two of them, and the white hats within the department, GA will be hoping they have the goods to keep GA rolling on the road to revitalisation.
The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) found that CASA's surveillance regime was only partly effective, without defining which part or how large that part was. CASA would argue that the ineffective part was very small, pointing as they did to the ICAO audit which gave them a compliance rating of 96.25%. That being considered true, the ineffective part identified by the ANAO could have been only 3.75%. However, it is likely that ANAO and ICAO didn't have the same set of audit criteria. CASA in the meantime has accepted all seven recommendations, one of which correlates with something the aviation industry has been asking for: surveillance activities need to take into account the risk of the operation. Risk generally has two components: the likelihood of something happening and the consequences. In GA, the consequences of something going pear-shaped in most operations is low. For example, a GA plane can divert to Mildura and land without it making the news, but do it in a B737 ... But if the GA plane is on a charter flight, CASA wants it to adhere to the same set of rules as the B737 despite the consequence part of the risk being very different. ANAO identified this and CASA accepted it. Will implementing this recommendation make a substantial difference? If it does, we will have seen evidence of sweeping change through CASA.
At the time writing, there are only 33 registration marks available for the Australian civil register, which has forced CASA to open up the register to new options. The VH-XXX system produces only 17,526 options, which is not very many when you consider the UK's G-XXXX system produces 456,976. And the US system is so broad the combinations are almost endless, given the number of digits/letters after the N doesn't have to be consistent (you can do the maths ... I gave up). So it appears the rego system we chose in 1929 was restrictive, but back then there probably weren't 17,526 aircraft in the whole world, so you can't blame anyone back then for thinking that was enough. Going to alpha-numerics will add slightly more than double the number of regos available to VH-registered aircraft. We can only hope that one day there are so many aircraft in Australia that we strike trouble again. So right now people are thinking of quirky combinations that will be worth putting on their aeroplane. Some entreprenuer someone might like VH-B2B, or to impress a lover, VH-I4U; someone called Katie might want VH-K8E or, as a farewell, VH-CU2. But the biggest barney will be over who gets VH-AV8. I'm betting people have already taken steps to reserve that one.
May your gauges always be in the green,
Hitch