AOPA AT WORK
Marc De Stoop AOPA President mds@aopa.com.au
Mark is a dedicated advocate for GA in all its forms whether flying his Beech Musketeer with his wife or in his RA-Aus aircraft. He is a keen member of the Antique Aeroplane Association of Australia, RAA and Australian Warbirds. He will continue to attend airshows and club events all over Australia finding stories for our magazine, so his contribution to AOPA will continue. These brief summations of our retiring board don’t do full justice to the efforts that they have made on behalf of AOPA and GA, however they have been and will continue to be part of the AOPA family of aviators who give up their time in a voluntary capacity for the benefit of not just AOPA members, but the whole of GA. We thank them for their service to AOPA and GA. Thank you Phillip for the informative tribute to Allan, Rob and Mark. Going forward I warmly welcome to the board our new directors Aminta Hennessy, Catherine Fitzsimmons, John Glynn, Mike Smith, Dominic James and Phillip Yates. I look forward to working with all new and past directors, for the good of the membership and the revitalisation of general aviation in Australia. The CVs of the new directors are in this edition of AP I have called the new board together in June for a two day conference to develop an AOPA business plan covering the next two years of operations. . The aim is to give the executive a clear set of policy deliverables with guidelines and expectations. The board, along with its traditional governance and fiduciary duties, will monitor the effectiveness of the AOPA Executive delivering outcomes in accordance with the business plan. My plan is not to have the board micromanage the executive. The board must set the agenda and monitor the effectiveness of the executive on delivering that agenda. In previous years our finances were so strained that we could not afford any full-time employees. Thankfully that has now changed with increasing revenues and membership. Don’t get me wrong, we are not flush with funds as yet. We continue to need prudent control of expenditure. We are not out of the financial woods as yet, but we are making a comeback. We have a much improved financial position now than when I started and that is helping us make AOPA a more effective advocacy body. The big issue for me remains regulatory reform. I pulled together our policy agenda in Project Eureka before the last election. Despite a lot of nice Canberra rhetoric we, along with the TAAAF have failed so far in convincing the Coalition to adopt any suitable policy reform. All Minister Chester has done is called
for bureaucratic studies to see if there is a decline in GA activity in Australia. I am however pleased to report that Ben Morgan has managed over the past two months to meet Bill Shorten, Anthony Albanese, One Nation, Team Xenophon, The Greens and also a senior Minister in the Liberal party ( who wishes to remain anonymous given that the Nationals hold the portfolio) . The only political party that refuses to meet Ben are the Nationals. All people or parties Ben has met are considering taking up varying amounts of the Eureka policy framework. Some are cherry picking and some are looking at it in its entirety. But it’s a slow frustrating process where the feeling at times is that you are just getting lip service. It’s basically typical Canberra, filled with red tape, with no sense of urgency whatsoever about the huge problems we face. What is a very common theme from the meetings we’ve had is that AOPA’s high profile media campaign has the potential to deliver votes to each of the parties. Cynical but true. These are their words not mine. It would appear it’s the only way we can get attention and we’ll do whatever it takes to get the decisionmakers to realise these are problems that need addressing now, not in 12 months after three more studies and white papers. One of the most important tasks I want to hand on to new board member Mike Smith is to review and improve Eureka before re-energising our regulatory reform efforts in Canberra. Mike, unfortunately, was recently culled from the CASA DAS/ CEO position. He has an outstanding pedigree of regulatory reform (see his CV). I’m really surprised the CASA Board, who keep saying they’re looking for a reformist DAS, could cut him out so early in the selection process. Even though this is a sad outcome it’s good in one way. It has allowed Mike to sit on our side of the table in Canberra. It will be an interesting time ahead. In closing, I wanted to share an article I read in the American Business Aviation Insider Magazine how the FAA has reformed its culture and dealings with industry. It’s a couple of pages but I urge you all to read it. I hope the DAS interview/selection panel, as well as the CASA Board, read it and I hope one day we have a CASA culture that harmonises us with the FAA.
Marc De Stoop President www.aopa.com.au I AUSTRALIAN PILOT
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