Our Guest Speaker was to talk to us about General Aviation in Australia, so there was no competition - Geoff Breust was to do the introduction.
Ben Morgan is the CEO of the Australian Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, is based at Bankstown airport in Sydney, and has been involved in lobbying for his association in political and industry issues.
He started by telling us about the government regulation of aviation, heavily regulated through CASA, and the creep to tighter regulation that seems inevitable in Australian society.
Statistically, aviation is very safe, but is being strangled by a public service that needs to justify its existence, and Ben gave examples of the USA equivalent which is far easier to deal with.
A significant issue that has impacted General Aviation revolves around the Federal Government decision to privatise Airports, where large commercial entities purchased the asset, and developed the site with regard to maximising return, but not for aviation interests. This has seen many general aviation sites used for residential and commercial development that is not sympathetic to the industry.
Another major issue that Ben's association has to deal with is the failure to train personnel, both pilots and engineers. The large Commercial airlines have poached pilots from overseas, and aircraft maintenance was allowed to cease after the Lima convention where engineering procedures in third world countries are deemed to be equal quality to established standards here. Australian Airlines cut costs and moved maintenance overseas.
Ben spoke of many critical issues that the association is facing -
Failure to train apprentices in engineering roles.
Medical requirements for light aircraft pilots.
Airport expansion acreages reallocated to residential and unrelated commercial.