Who’s investigating whom?
Industry identities this week were dismayed at a reported CASA decision to establish an in-house “Ethics and Conduct Committee,” apparently either bypassing or replacing the regulator’s Industry Complaints Commissioner (ICC).
CASA will not comment on details of the new group, understood to have been instituted by order of CASA Director John McCormick,
We asked CASA today: “I am aware that the Director has ordered the formation of an ‘Ethics & Conduct Committee’ within CASA and that the committee’s membership includes Messrs:
- Terry Farquharson, who has recently been appointed Acting Executive Manager of the Office of the Director of Aviation Safety;
- Jonathan Aleck, currently Head of Legal Services; and
- Gary Harbor, Executive Manager, Corporate Services.
CASA advised it “can’t offer anything.”
We had also asked for missing details which would have defined the committee’s total membership, terms of reference, reporting lines, responsibilities in terms of published CASA policy, and means of ensuring its decisions will be able to be made independently of the committee members’ employers.
AviationAdvertiser holds ample documentation that reveals that at least two of the committee members we’ve named are the subject of numerous grievances currently under the scrutiny of the ICC, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, the Federal Court, the Commonwealth Ombudsman and possibly other agencies – as well as a small mountain of even more unresolved issues.
Complainants cover the entire spectrum of industry activity within CASA’s responsibility. However we’re not identifying any of these at the moment because of the need to confer with each of the many victims, some of whom fear further adverse reactions from the regulator or from individual officials. They cover aircraft maintenance & overhaul services, aircraft and parts manufacturers, airworthiness issues, flight operations, AOC and workshop approval holders, and individual licence and approval holders.
Other victims of alleged CASA abuses whose businesses and lives have been damaged by over-zealous and/or inadequately overseen, trained and supervised officials, say they are watching one of these matters – the events surrounding Polar Aviation’s lawsuit with great interest. See: Mouse in the House of CASA
In 1996 the Attorney-General’s Department provided CASA with a legal opinion that (in part) warned that in relation to various legal actions which may be brought against CASA – such as negligence, including negligent misstatement, breach of confidence, injurious falsehood or misfeasance in public office – the government indemnity will not apply in favour of a CASA officer, where that officer is guilty of serious or wilful misconduct. “The likelihood that such actions would be brought, not only on the grounds of defamation, appears very high,” said the advice.
The Polar Aviation lawsuit, which was scheduled to be the subject of a directions hearing today, seeks unquantifed damages from three named CASA officials including Mr Farquharson, from three former officials, and also from CASA itself.
Industry figures believe the environment for generating further complaints is now increasing and that the risk exists, that members of the new committee may find themselves investigating complaints against themselves, many of which are already published documents.
Are we seeing the standard bureaucratic approach to a serious deficiency in governance within CASA, ie No action for the problem,just form a committee! And to ensure a negative result for the industry participants/victims, put on that committee some of the players who are part of the problem in the first place!
No independence here!
Its exactly the same problem that citizens have about Police investigating Police,when their conduct and behaviour is allegedly negligent or unlawful.
CASA supposedly has a”Code of Coduct”, most likely written in plain,understandable language. What happens if a CASA officer breaches that code? Nothing??
The CASA “client”/victim probably will get the same response as an Administrative Decisions Act request; two fingers out the window of Aviation House, and no reply.
What is John McC to do, a real investigation would expose years of the worst kind of reprisal to a decimated industry. He has been left to clean up the mess like Bruce was before him and as no one will act professionally within that organisation and survive to tell the tale, what is the answer but to disband the whole lot and start again using proven simple systems. When foundations are rotten you have no choice but to replace them. With this structure the rot is everywhere. How do you salvage the few good bits?
With a police force we can expect the occasional surrender to temptation because of the environment they operate in. With CASA it is mainly incompetents getting even with an industry that wouldn’t employ them. It’s called revenge.
The answer is transparency and accountability but we the industry already know they couldn’t stand up to any form of scrutiny.