– Steve Hitchen
I don't mind driving up the Hume Highway to get to Canberra; with the cruise control set and hundreds of kilometres to run it gives me plenty of thinking time. I made the trip again this week to catch up with Director of Aviation Safety Pip Spence and her team, new RAAus CEO Maxine Milera and RAAA CEO Rob Walker. After spending the day delving deeply into the soul of general aviation, I still came up with no clear solution to the industry's woes. We are still facing challenges for which no obvious solutions are apparent. More critically, the challenges are the same ones that plagued the GA community up to 25 years ago: regulatory over-burden, rising costs, skills shortages, an ageing fleet, a lack of women and young people ... it's beginning to sound like a radio program on Groundhog Day. Part of the problem has been that initiatives put in place up to now have not yielded the results that the GA community (including me) hailed. Most of those initiatives have been regulatory, which starts to hint at a conclusion that many (but not all) of the root worries don't lie with the regulator. Several key challenges are the responsibility of government departments (e.g. airports, engineer training), which is covered by some excellent advocacy that stands to be reinforced with the impending emergence of The Australian Aviation Associations Forum (TAAAF). The residue of the catalogue of woes must therefore be loaded onto the GA industry itself. In a very Kennedy-esque manner, it may be time for the GA community to ask not what the industry can do for them, but rather what they can do for the industry.
Whilst the department busies itself preparing an industry white paper, CASA continues to look at how it can use regulatory powers to ameliorate the engineer skills shortage regardless of government policy. One measure on the table is fast-tracking Australian qualifications for foreign engineers. In an environment where the engineer pipeline is clogged with a training fatberg, bringing in people already qualified to swing spanners seems to be a no-brainer solution. But, as normal, there are hurdles that may trip up the whole idea: an incompatibility between Australian and foreign qualifications, and stubborn immigration boom gates. So it is pleasing to see CASA contemplating such a simple solution as a direct recognition of foreign states, which I read to mean Europe and the USA in the main. When one country manufactures 69% of the world's GA aeroplanes and 71% of those stay in the country of manufacture, I'm not assuming much risk by saying engineers from that country know how to fix them. The same goes for Europe: 27% of GA aeroplanes are made in EASA countries, so engineers who routinely maintain Europe's fleet are a safe bet. That leaves immigration. Despite the RAAA making representations to the government to place engineers on the Priority Migration Skilled Occupation List (PMSOL ) in 2022, Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs Andrew Giles batted it away. We now know why: the PMSOL doesn't exist anymore, replaced instead by a ministerial directive that is as vague and wordy as, well, a ministerial directive. Whilst it's a great idea to fast-track qualification recognition for engineers, the measure needs to go hand-in-hand with a fast track for importing the candidates. Failure to do so runs the risk of rendering the initiative ineffective.
Despite Jason Harfield having perhaps the lowest media profile of all aviation CEOs in Australia, I am still surprised to see that his tenure as the head of Airservices has not been extended. The reason is simple: Harfield did just about everything the government asked him to do. It may not have been what the industry or the unions wanted, but it was what the government wanted and in that respect Harfield delivered for his masters, right or wrong. If the Greens haven't led us all astray, Harfield was torpedoed by politicians unhappy with pressure being exerted over the handling of noise complaints, specifically at Brisbane Airport. That all having been done, Harfield's departure opens up a choice position within the aviation industry that may well be coveted by a cohort of candidates that would love the job. Some of them may even have departed Airservices previously in their careers and may be open to returning. Add to that a range of heirs apparent from within the current executive team and the government should have no need to advertise on the noticeboard at Centrelink. Thought without warning: could we be entering an era that has women at the head of CASA, RAAus, the department and Airservices? Nothing to see here ... just me being mischievous.
May your gauges always be in the green,
Hitch