CASA Director of Aviation Safety Mark Skidmore has made it clear that a just culture approach to regulation will need co-operation from the aviation community.
Adopting a just culture was one of the key recommendations coming out of the Aviation Safety Regulation Review (Forsyth Report), which Skidmore announced this week that CASA would implement.
Speaking with Australian Flying last Wednesday, Skidmore said that he needed input to make the intiative work properly.
"I want people to report things," he said. "They should be able to do that without thinking that we’re going to slap them with an enforcement every time. A good safety system means I need to have the information to look at how we need to adjust regulations, how we need to change things to make it better for everyone out there."
Although the regulator has always encouraged self-reporting, the lack of just culture within CASA and the concept of strict liability has made the industry wary of doing so. Skidmore believes that just culture needs open dialogue with the aviation community.
"I think industry is part of it, the whole community is part of it. I can’t operate in a vacuum. If I’m not getting the information then I can’t work on it, I can’t do anything with it. I need the help of the community out there when we’re going through a post-implementation review to give us feedback, to tell us what we’ve done wrong, if that’s the case, or where we can improve.
"I think the ideal of a safety system is where people are reporting themselves and saying 'hey, we saw this, we did this, we’ve learnt from it, we’ve adjusted this.' And I’m going to say 'well done, thank you very much.' That’s exactly what I want from a safety management system!"
Skidmore feels he has the support of the CASA board and the minister Warren Truss to make such an important reform to aviation safety regulation, and that there is little resistance within CASA itself to make the changes.
Without the co-operation of the aviation community, however, it will be hard for him to make just culture work.