Mr MARTIN FERGUSON (2:08 PM) —My question is to the Minister for Transport and Regional Services. I refer to the safety concerns raised about his new national airspace reforms that begin today and the comments by the Chairman of the Regional Aviation Association of Australia, who said:

Can the minister guarantee that there will be no increase in risk as a result of his new system?

Mr ANDERSON (Minister for Transport and Regional Services) —I thank the honourable member for his question. You can never have no risk in aviation. I wish it were possible to have no risk in aviation, but you cannot. I hear claims about the inevitability of a mid-air crash and I think to myself that that would be a horrible outcome. It has been in the past; it has happened 36 times since 1961, and it has always been dreadful and it has always been appalling. Of course our objective is to keep our skies as safe as possible. I say quite openly to the parliament, as I have said many times: it is not my job, my responsibility or my training to be able to advise on every technical aspect of safety. That is why we have statutorily independent advisers to keep our skies safe, to advise on procedures and to run safety cases on new proposals.

At every point the bodies responsible for determining how to maximise safety and whether new proposals are safe and whether modifications should be made have been fully involved in the design of what is essentially a proven international system and have made adjustments for localised circumstances where necessary. That has been their task. At every stage they have been involved and at every stage they have made themselves available. They are certainly available to the opposition spokesman for transport. I would welcome him setting aside some time to go to where the implementation group is housed and talk to CASA, talk to Airservices, talk to the RAAF, talk to Qantas and talk to whoever he would like to talk to—I have nothing to hide here at all. I want this to be as transparent and as open a process as possible, but I am not going to wimp out on worthwhile reform which I believe will increase safety and help us to grow a bigger aviation sector in Australia, with more jobs and more opportunities for young people, and which has a real chance to increase our export performance, particularly in the area of education.

We have attempted these reforms in the past. They have come unstuck because there has been inadequate training, or for whatever reason was given. The process this time has been exhaustive. I understand that by nature pilots in particular and air-traffic controllers are conservative. That is a good thing. There is a saying: there are young bold pilots but there are no old bold pilots. So it is important that their views be taken into account. But I have to say to this House that my conscience is clear and that I have set up procedures for exhaustive consultation. They are still there and I just wish that the member for Batman, who says that he does not believe in politicising aviation safety, would go and talk to all of the people who have put this together. And if he thinks that somebody would like some more consultation, he should take them along to. That would be a great service to aviation.