Hide Rodney: General Debates 
Hide Rodney: General Debates 
[Volume:619;Page:14616] 
RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) 
: 
 The Civil Aviation Authority is a very important organisation in New Zealand. It ensures what is most important—that the aircraft flying overhead in which we travel are safe for transport. In order to do that it has extraordinary powers under the statute that governs it. I consider that the Minister in charge of civil aviation the Hon Harry Duynhoven is a friend of mine but I have to say he has totally failed the transport sector in respect of the Civil Aviation Authority and I believe that over this issue he should step aside. I also believe that the Director of Civil Aviation John Jones has to resign and if he will not he should be sacked. 
I want to take members back to the Mercer Flight Centre and the investigation that the Civil Aviation Authority undertook. What happened was that the Civil Aviation Authority under the leadership of its top flight operations inspector one Mr Richard Cox who was the lead auditor of this team put the Mercer Flight Centre under covert surveillance. There is nothing particularly wrong with that but then the problems started. We know from the State Services Commissioner that the Civil Aviation Authority grounded this airline effectively and then blow me down Mr Richard Cox turned up and said: “If you pay me some money on the side I’ll help get your safety levels up so that you can meet the criteria.” Of course the Mercer Flight Centre was somewhat alarmed at that. It rang the Director of Civil Aviation John Jones. He said that it was OK—that he had authorised it. Not only that; he had authorised it in writing in a letter. Of course the State Services Commissioner and this Government thought that was outrageous. But unfortunately the only person who was sacked out of this was Mr Cox who had been doing exactly as he had been directed to do by his own chief executive officer. 
We then discover that the Civil Aviation Authority while auditing the company received stolen property. It then used that stolen property as part of its audit returned the stolen property then lied about it. That would be bad enough but unfortunately the stolen property was an aircraft logbook which had been taken out of a plane. I shall quote from— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: An aircraft logbook? 
RODNEY HIDE 
: Yes and it was taken out of a plane. Trevor Mallard finds it hard to believe but I quote from the report of 16 June 2004 given to me by the chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority. The young agent who was part of the team said: “Richard told me to take the book with me out to the aircraft when I was going to do my inspection and then I would ‘find it’ in the aircraft and bring it back with all the other documentation to the Mercer Flight Centre buildings. If anybody asked me I was to say that I found it in the aircraft behind the pilot seat under the carpet.” Why? Because the company was looking for the logbook which it needed to maintain that plane. Here was the Civil Aviation Authority in receipt of stolen property returning it to the plane then lying about where it had been found and what had happened. 
But more alarming the chief executive officer of this company explained to me that he believed that telephone was being tapped—that is that the Civil Aviation Authority knew what he was saying on the phone. I said: “That’s impossible.” Well I can assure the House that Richard Cox of the Civil Aviation Authority used taxpayer-supplied scanning equipment to listen in to telephone conversations and used a tape-recorder to tape them as part of his covert surveillance. I believe that New Zealanders should be horrified to learn that civil servants are tapping people’s phones. I am amazed that this Government does not seem to care. I can assure those members that the chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority fully accepts that private telephone conversations were listened into as part of a surveillance operation and that the results of those conversations were recorded.