The future of the Senate Legislation Committee on Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport (RRAT) inquiry into the general aviation industry remains in limbo as it has yet to be re-referred to the senate after the federal election held in May.
All senate inquiries lapse when parliament is prorogued, and if they are to continue in the new parliament, need to be re-referred to the senate committee.
Five months after the election, the nearly three-year-old GA industry inquiry remains lapsed.
Although former RRAT Chair Senator Susan McDonald has asked for the inquiry to be referred back, the office of new RRAT chair Senator Glenn Sterle told Australian Flying that no comment on the inquiry would be possible until the ALP government had responded to the interim report tabled last March.
The GA inquiry was self-referred to the RRAT committee in December 2019 with an interim reporting date of December 2020 and a final report one year later. COVID restrictions later forced that to be modified to March 2022. The deadlines were changed again with the interim report being tabled in March 2022 with the final report due on 20 October 2022.
However, the federal election intervened and forced the inquiry into a lapsed state.
One of the early supporters of the GA inquiry was the Regional Aviation Association of Australia (RAAA). Current CEO Steve Campbell said the GA inquiry needed to be closed off so all the work put in by the GA community wouldn't go to waste,
"We'd like to see the GA inquiry completed; a lot of work has gone into it and it would be a shame to see it not go through to fruition," he said. "Hopefully the committee will find some good recommendations to give to the government to ease the burden on general aviation.
"We've come this far, and it's important for the general aviation community to see that government's genuinely interested in finding solutions."
The GA community has raised concerns that the ALP will disregard the work done by the senate inquiry in favour of doing a new White Paper, which has been their policy since well before the election. Doing so would further delay any revitalising measures.
"The GA inquiry has been going for a couple of years already and we've said to the government that if we know there are some solutions now, we want the government to act on it now ... we don't want to wait for another two-year process to tell us what we already know," Campbell said.
"The GA inquiry has already uncovered some things that can be worked on, and the government should start working on them straight away."
The office of Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government Catherine King has been contacted for comment about responding to the interim report.