It is said that the night is darkest right before the dawn, that the break of day brings new hope and opportunity. General aviation in Australia was in a dark place in 2014, and for the community the dawn came when then Safeskies chairman David Forsyth handed the government a review of Australia’s safety regulation regime.
It was effectively a report card on the way the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) handled safety regulation, and the recommendations caused some serious ripples in the aviation industry.
Known as the Aviation Safety Regulation Review (ASRR), but known colloquially as the Forsyth Report, the review was the work of Forsyth, Don Spruston from Canada and Roger Whitefield from the UK. It handed Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss 37 recommendations, of which the government agreed either in whole or in principle with 36.
The aviation community responded by hailing the outcome; the ASRR would be the salve that healed all wounds.
However, 10 years later, the aches and pains are much the same despite all the changes wrought within CASA in response to the ASRR. What happened to the new dawn?
The heart of the matter
Today, David Forsyth is not as in touch with aviation safety as he was 10 years ago, but he still remembers that the cornerstone principle behind the ASRR was that CASA wasn’t well connected to the industry it regulated.
“One of the core issues in the ASRR at the time was a lack of mutual trust and respect,” he
