Senator BROWN (10:16 AM) —If one analyses the submissions we have just heard, what we can come up with is that there are safety components to the regulations that are being effectively turned around by the government through this civil aviation audit which should stand, and that there are added provisions which the government could come up with to build on that. That is to say, the two safety components should be brought together and not used to cancel each other out. That is the effect of what is happening: we are going backwards in one direction and a little forwards in another direction, and that is not good enough.

I come back again to the point that regional airlines in the UK would not operate into airports—they cannot do so legally, as I understand it—which do not have the facili ties that the regulations now being disallowed provide for. So why should regional airports in Australia be denied those facilities? The parliamentary secretary has said that we are very conservative in a good way here and that we have to proceed slowly through experience. The reality is that we are way behind overseas standards. Part of the safety record in Australia is because there is much less dense air traffic. We are not dealing with the European situation and certainly are not dealing with the UK situation. But I think we should have the safety standards that are invoked over there and should not simply let our air safety record drift back because we are not putting in world standard safety facilities.

One cannot help but see the hand of the big airlines at work here. The parliamentary secretary mentions Uluru and says that the facilities are being put in there and will be trialled soon. Let me tell you, Mr Acting Deputy President, that that is because the timetable there is being set by the airlines and not by the government. That is what is wrong here. The airlines are dictating the call and not the government. But this is the government, and this is ministerial responsibility. You cannot even ultimately shed it back to CASA—although I think that CASA is far too much influenced by the airlines and lacking in the independence that is required if we are going to get best air safety in rural and regional Australia in the way that I have outlined and in the way that the Airline Owners and Pilots Association itself says we should be heading.

There is an inherent threat here by the airlines that if they do not get what they want they will go for the oval pattern, the circuiting of airports before they come in—which arguably has problems with it. The problem there can be overcome, but it is simply not going to be overcome because the airlines through that method of threat have got the government coerced into turning around perfectly good previous standing orders for air safety. We are actually going backwards. That is the problem here: we are going backwards and not forwards. The timetable has been handed across not to safety authorities acting independently for the public good but, effec tively, to the influence of the big airlines. I repeat that $1 million to put in ground operators at 20 or 30 airports around Australia is surely not too big a price to pay when one of the two big airlines has just posted a $224 million profit.

What else can I say? We are all going to vote in the way we wish to. But let me, through the parliamentary secretary, say this in summing up. We are dealing with this here in the parliament. It is our responsibility. In particular, it is the minister's responsibility to determine what is in the interests of the travelling public and of pilots in Australia. The minister has made the wrong decision here. He is wrong about this. He should be expecting a better, more independent initiative from CASA. He should be very aware of the influence of the big airlines.

When the Airline Owners and Pilots Association, representing 17,000 people around the country, say that they were not consulted about this, you have to understand that something is very wrong. If the very people who are most affected by this are not consulted but the big airlines certainly are—and their hand can be seen all over this—there is a political pressure situation here which the minister needs to get out of. He cannot blame somebody else further down the line. It is his responsibility and it is the government's responsibility—and now the opposition's responsibility.

We are left with the appeal for the minister to take charge of the timetable here instead of leaving it to Qantas and to Ansett. It is the minister's responsibility. The minister has to give direction to CASA to implement safety procedures bringing us up with the rest of the world and not leave it to the comfort and consideration of the boards of those airlines. That is not good enough.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Chapman) —The question is that the motion standing in the name of Senator Brown relating to the disallowance of various amendments to Civil Aviation Orders and exemptions made under Civil Aviation Regulations be agreed to.