The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association of Australia (AOPA) is advocating the New Zealand system of regulation be adopted in Australia.
The statement was made in AOPA's submission to the Aviation Safety Regulation Review and posted on their website.
Dealing specifically with the issues general aviation has with the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA), the submission stresses that dealing with individual problem would help the situation, but that a larger solution was needed.
" ... it is with some regret that our organization has come to the conclusion that continuing to patch up problems is like renovating a house with rotten foundations," the submission says. "You spend twice as much time and money and at the end of the day you still have an old house.
"We now believe in nothing short of a clean sweep of the old, and adoption of FARs [Federal Aviation Regulations], as has been demonstrated by NZ’s adoption of the FAA GA model about 17 years ago. It is fact that since then, NZ’s GA has outstripped Australia’s.
"We have heard it said that where it takes a wheelbarrow to carry a copy of all regs pertaining to GA, New Zealand’s can be carried in one hand. This may be an exaggeration, but it is not an exaggeration to say that adoption of the NZ regulatory system for GA would improve the prospects of GA’s survival.
"A reversal of disastrous government policy on airfields is also a high priority. Fix CASA (by adopting the NZ system) and make airfields back into airfields, and all the other problems will seem minor."
Submissions to the ASRR close tomorrow.