Senator BOB COLLINS(3.06 p.m.) —I move:

That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Communications and the Arts (Senator Alston), to a question without notice asked by Senator Bob Collins today, relating to aviation safety.

The Minister for Transport and Regional Development (Mr Sharp) has made a number of decisions since his appointment in March. Two of those decisions were made not in the interests of aviation safety; they were made in order to blatantly reward those who supported them during the recent federal election campaign. They were political paybacks with a sting—a safety sting.

The first decision was to allow the use of portable emergency locater transmitters as well as fixed DLTs. In doing so, Mr Sharp overrode the advice of the technical experts in safety at the Civil Aviation Safety Authority. He also thumbed his nose at the experience and practice of every other country in the world. CASA made a decision to require the use of fixed automatically activating emergency locater transmitters in all aircraft. It was CASA's view that this system offered the best level of safety. It is also the world view. The minister overturned that decision.

This was purely and simply a reward to the Australian Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association for its up-front political support for the coalition during the campaign. CASA had no option but to comply with Mr Sharp's ministerial direction—even though, in my view, it may have placed the organisation in breach of the Civil Aviation Act.

The second decision concerns the imposition on Australia's civil aviation search and rescue units of the precision aerial delivery system—PADS—search and rescue system. In taking this decision, Mr Sharp ignored advice from such experts as the RAAF Aircraft Research and Development Unit. The RAAF unit tested the PADS system in 1995. Let me quote from the summary of the RAAF report. It states:

The PADS system was considered to be unacceptable for release as the first PADS drop resulted in large amplitude rotational motion of the static line and the drog impacting on the elevator of the release aircraft. Consequently, flight testing was suspended.

It is there in the RAAF report in black and white. This equipment was so dangerous it was recommended that it should not even be trialled, let alone put into active service. I asked a number of questions about the problems of the PADS system in recent hearings of the Senate estimates committees. I was advised by a senior officer of Airservices Australia that these deficiencies identified by the RAAF with the new system had been addressed `in the new model'. I was further told:

I have received advice that they have been addressed.

We found out in further questioning that these assurances had come from the company that manufactured them.

The minister then released a media statement on 23 September, announcing that the government had decided to equip Australia's aviation civil search unit with this PADS system. The minister said that there had been an independent evaluation of the PADS system—that is, independent of the RAAF—and that the system was currently in use. The PADS system had been found to be superior. He said:

In 90 days the deployment of the PADS units and training will have been completed providing a final solution and closing the book on this long standing and controversial issue.

The book is far from closed on this issue. The initial PADS training was conducted on 9 and 10 November at Jervis Bay. There were 13 drops of the search and rescue equipment made. I am advised that in seven of these drops—that is, seven out of 13—there were equipment failures, including problems involving the rope and static line. This is the equipment that the minister had independently evaluated and has spent nearly $700,000 of public money on.

I understand the particular incident that saw an aircraft nearly lost involved not an equipment failure but a breakdown in procedure. It appears that the government has chosen to ignore the advice from the RAAF Aircraft Research and Development Unit but the release altitude for PADS of 100 feet—that is above the water—is unsafe. I understand that the aircraft that was involved in this incident was operating at an altitude of 100 feet when it got into difficulty. At that altitude, there is clearly no margin whatever for error. The failure of the government to accept the RAAF advice had put the crew on board this aircraft at risk, and the minister should be held accountable.

I understand that the use of PADS, having spent $700,000 on it, has now been suspended and that aviation civil search units have been directed to revert to the existing Airservices Australia SAR systems. These systems have only a one-year currency, and a number of the units are now reaching the end of their use-by date.

The Aviation Civil Search Organisation in Australia is now under threat of collapse as a result of this political fix—all because the minister is indulging himself in a political pay-off. There are a number of outstanding answers to questions I asked in the estimates hearings about both the ELT issue and the PADS issue, which I am advised have now been sitting on the minister's desk for more than two weeks. He has simply ignored the deadline for those answers, which was 11 November. I can only conclude at this stage that it is because the answers he has sitting on his desk are not to his liking.

Question resolved in the affirmative.