In what seems like a bad case of Déjà vu, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority’s outgoing Director of Aviation Safety, Mr Shane Carmody, has launched the regulators latest political charm-offensive, distributing to ‘select’ aviation community participants a ‘Measuring Our Performance Aviation Community Survey’, most likely seeking answers CASA want, but not what CASA needs.
Cast your thoughts back to the survey scandal of 2018, where CASA and it’s so-called independent consultant ‘Colmar Brunton’ surveyed a handful of CASA selected recipients, resulting in a report that alleged “findings show a clear pattern of improvement across all aspects of CASAs relationship with industry.”
Exactly where those improvements were to be found, remains a significant unsolved mystery.
Click to download a copy of the Colmar Brunton report.
Click to read AOPA Australia’s submission to the Deputy Prime Minister, The Hon Michael McCormack
This latest sham-survey comes just weeks after a scathing report from Professionals Australia, the union representing CASA’s own staff, boldly claiming the regulator to be in a ‘state of crisis’, with staff having lost confidence in the senior leadership. The report confirming that a broad number of CASA’s own staff agree with the broader industry’s concerns that CASA senior leadership team have has lost their way and should rightfully retire and bow out.
Click to read AOPA Australia article about the Professionals Australia report.
Touted as an independent survey that seeks ‘frank’ views and opinions from the ‘aviation community’, the survey appears to have only been distributed to select recipients, who received the survey request via a CASA email, which we have learned is IP locked to prevent anyone other than the intended recipient from making a submission.
According to the CASA email, the survey is being conducted by an independent company ‘Faster Horses Consulting’ and that ‘your feedback will never be connected to you’ and that ‘only de-identified survey results will be published’. This statement appears to contradict the fact that the survey email appears to track the recipients IP address, which then appears to be used to block any unintended recipients accessing the survey – none of which appears to be disclosed or informed to the recipient. Furthermore, survey recipients are blocked from accessing their submissions once sent.
AOPA Australia attempted to clarify the above with CASA Project Contact, Prue Zamora, however was informed by CASA reception that the contact was not available, but we could leave a message.
This latest wool-pulling survey highlights the very heart of the problem with CASA – that they are intentionally deceptive. If they were transparent and forthright, the survey would be going out to all of industry, with all views – both positive and negative – being included. Or at the very least, CASA’s survey should be open to allowing anyone who is interested to participating.
AOPA Australia has written to both CASA and the Deputy Prime Minister highlighting our concerns.
IMPORTANT UPDATE:
At 5:30pm, Wednesday 4th November, AOPA Australia was sent a survey link that takes participants directly to the Faster Horses Consulting website, bypassing the CASA links provided to recipients;
Click to participate in this survey.
