From: Robert Hart <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
...I would urge all Qld members to try to get to this meeting at Caboolture. Even if the GFA hierarchy decides to bury its head in the sand on these issues, there is much that we can do ourselves.
On the contrary , Robert, there is EVERYTHING that the Clubs and members can do themselves. The GFA is neither fundamental nor central to the safety culture in gliding. If self-regulation means anything, it means that we take responsibility as individuals for our own actions. It means that the Clubs and their members are the basis of gliding in Australia and THEY are source of the safety culture or lack of it in gliding in Australia. The GFA is only the coach.
You have this tendency to want an all-powerful governing body that you can (never-endingly) blame for all the faults in gliding. It's not like that. YOU are responsible for the safety culture in gliding. The clubs are the root of it all. That's why the GFA can only try to help set agendas, pass on information and encourage the clubs and pilots. It's not Big Brother. I differ with Mike Borgelt's views but he is quite consistent. He doesn't believe in self-regulation. He wants CASA to run gliding and be an authoritarian dictator. You want self-regulation but you also want someone to blame for self-regulation's shortcomings. So you have to picture the GFA as some all-powerful dictator. It's not. It's just the voice of the clubs. The question is not CASA or the GFA, it's CASA or the clubs. Right now it's the clubs. So safety in YOUR club is YOUR problem.
We had a safety seminar last weekend in Bathurst and it was a great success. A full interchange of ideas and views between EQUALS from the NSW clubs and the GFA people responsible for encouraging safety made it a good day. I hope Caboolture's is even better.
Assembling statistics on incidents (i.e. things that happened that were not accidents but nearly were) is under way at DDSC, as is clear accident reporting. At the recent state comp, air miss incident information was gathered from pilots.
Great! That's what self-regulation means. Do it yourself.
Local Qld initiatives like this will allow Qld to move ahead and create a safer gliding regimen, in spite of the recalcitrance of the ops panel and others, who will become increasingly irrelevant until they realise that their duty of care is the the membership and not to themselves.
Now that's a VERY Queensland paragraph. Sometimes I think that if Queensland didn't have the rest of Australia to blame for its problems and to have some incompetence to compare the much better Queensland way with, it'd be totally flummoxed. :)
Robert, in safety, the GFA is not a crutch to be leaned on or a whipping boy to blame. It's an imperfect resource to use where you can. Fix your own problems. And keep the politics out of safety. If you insist on continuing your "a pox on the GFA" agenda by hijacking a safety seminar for political purposes you are sillier than even I think.
It is worth noting that the then head of the ops panel is now our esteemed President...amazing how the GFA hierarchy system works isn't it?
Yes. It's a wonderful system called democracy. The majority of States and clubs don't want Queensland's agenda so they don't have to have it rammed down their throat. They got to vote against it. Luckily, the GFA is largely advisory so you still get to do your own thing in your way and we (the rest of Australia) get to ignore you.
Three cheers for democracy! Graeme Cant _______________________________________________ Aus-soaring mailing list [email protected] To check or change subscription details, visit: http://lists.internode.on.net/mailman/listinfo/aus-soaring
