Williamson Maurice: Civil Aviation Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Williamson Maurice: Civil Aviation Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:616;Page:11821] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 I guess this is one of the many times a member gets to speak in Parliament where it has all been said a number of times before. One feels a little bit like Madonna’s new boyfriend—he knows what is expected; his problem is how to make it interesting. My intention is to try to put a bit of a different spin on this issue and it is to do with the trans-Tasman mutual recognition of aviation which I do not think we have dwelt on enough with this bill. 
Obviously the National Party supports the bill but I just warn members of this Parliament that if they think the Australians will move willingly to this they are dreaming. When the Australians say they will they do not and even when they sign a document saying they have they have not and then they come back and renege on it with only a week to run. They have done it before. They have a track record of it. 
 We even had a single aviation market stitched up by the Prime Ministers. Prime Minister Bolger and Prime Minister Paul Keating ratified it at the prime ministerial meeting in 1994. On 26 October—and I remember the date well—with 1 week to run until 1 November 1994 when the open-skies single aviation market was to come into place Mr Brereton I think his name was—I’m still getting counselling about it so I am trying to keep the name out of my mind—just decided to unilaterally send a fax that said: “Sorry about that. We had agreed to all this but we’re not going to do it any more.” 
It is bizarre that it has taken the years it has to get Australia to agree to at least where we are now. For goodness’ sake a 747 is a 747 wherever it happens to be! I can promise that a Qantas 747 has the same bits and pieces to its engines its galleys and so on as any other 747 with that engine type. If it is a Rolls Royce then it is the same as a Rolls Royce and so on. The fact that our engineers were not certified to work on it when they were over there or that theirs could not work on it over here or vice versa because of what I guess were the old restrictive trade practices more than anything else is bizarre. 
I guess what is important for members of the House to recognise is just how much civil aviation has changed over the last couple of decades. Airlines were actually an extension of the foreign affairs arm of a country. They were the flag-flyers for the foreign affairs agencies of that country. Qantas was the Australian Government’s flag-flyer Air New Zealand was the New Zealand Government’s flag-flyer and BOAC was the overseas arm of the British Government’s foreign affairs agency. They were Government-owned and Government-controlled. The idea that anyone else could come into their domain and provide some sort of competitive market was just an outrage—it was disgraceful. Because of Government ownership we were not going to allow a second airline to come into this country. 
As everyone knows the ownership of most international airlines literally cannot be tracked. There is cross ownership. I understand that KLM Royal Dutch Airlines has bought Swissair and Scandinavian Airlines has a share in a couple of companies that own some shareholding in Aerolineas Argentinas out of Buenos Aires. Most civil aviation companies are simply businesses trying to attract passengers earn revenue and fly. It is time that we recognised the certifications of companies that operate in Australia and want to fly planes into here—both internationally and domestically—and we should recognise the people they recognise and vice versa for us. It dramatically reduces compliance costs. 
I do not know whether members will ever have any idea how much duplication and quadruplication has had to be involved in getting people to certify our planes and processes and so on. It might already have been done the once but their regime does not recognise ours and vice versa. Interestingly what sprang to mind when I heard one of the debates about controls over domestic and international flights was the enormous debate that went on about whether the 1979 Erebus flight was an international or a domestic flight. I still remember that crash with great sadness. I do not think the debate was ever solved. I know Sir Robert Muldoon was keen for it to be a domestic flight which then protected it from the international covenants of the Warsaw convention but because it had flown with a flight number of TE901 it was under Air New Zealand’s international operations. But then it was said that the flight only went from New Zealand and was supposed to come back without landing so it was a domestic flight. 
They then tried to change the name. If members look at the plaque down at the South Pole they will see that the flight number is NZ901 but then it was suddenly realised that if people had been killed on a domestic plane that bordered on the ambit of accident compensation. To this day I do not think that anyone has a final determination as to whether that flight was an international or domestic flight. Members will get the idea that it can all be quite difficult. People flying over the United States from a Canadian flight leaving from Quebec and going to say Vancouver can often fly over parts of the United States but still only land in the country they took off in. The point I am trying to make—and I know getting there makes me sound a bit long-winded—is that the old rules about this being our domain we will do it and no one else can come in here have to go. 
I congratulate the Government and Harry Duynhoven—who I am sure not only has engine oil but aviation fuel in his veins because he simply loves this stuff—on getting this legislation through. I wish him well in making sure that the blowtorch is kept on our Australian cousins on the other side of the pond. I do not think that they have anywhere near the desire we have but I hope I am wrong. I would love them to prove me wrong whip their legislation through post-haste and say: “That bloke Williamson didn’t know what he was talking about. We really believe in this as well.” 
 The other provisions of the bill are all quite common-sense ones. There have been a number of serious issues involving passengers—and on a couple of occasions while I worked at Air New Zealand aircrew themselves—having a few drinks and misbehaving on flights. There was a very famous case which we will not go into here but I was sort of involved in that process. It was a fascinating case and at the time there were a lot of very good jokes about Air New Zealand’s in-flight service. So the unruly people might not be the passengers but a whole lot of people. 
But a regime is needed because the aircraft is not in a country where police have the necessary rules. One has to say that while a 747 is flying along it is a sort of mini-country and the chief of police is the pilot. He or she has to have those powers and cannot afford not to be able to detain people with handcuffs which all those flights have. I have been on a couple of flights where there were some pretty ghastly examples of unruly behaviour. On one the guy was so tanked up that he tried to open the big door on the 747. He got hold of the big silver lever and started swinging on it. He said he had had a gutsful of the way the airline had treated him and wanted to get off. The fact that we were at 35000 feet and that that would be a problem for him once he was off the plane had not crossed his mind. 
I tried to assure the House the last time we spoke on this matter—and it is really quite important for members to know this—that one simply cannot open the door of a plane at 35000 feet because the door does not open outwards but inwards. Members should watch when they see the aircrew opening the aircraft doors. The doors have to be pulled in first rotated on a lever and then they go back out. Because the plane is highly pressurised at 35000 feet and the pressure is outwards Charles Atlas could not get the door back. There are huge volumes of pounds per square inch on that door and one cannot simply pull it back. So one could sit there comfortably and let that guy swing on the lever for as long as he liked safe in the knowledge that the door would not open inwards until the plane had come way way down and the pressure was equalised with the outside atmosphere—which is really on short finals as the aircraft is coming in towards the airport. 
In respect of the carriage of dangerous goods and aviation security I would like to give a plug to a particular Government agency. Around this place I am a person who often bags Government agencies for poor performance but I think Mark Everitt and the Aviation Security Service run one of the most stunning world-class operations and I would trust Mark Everitt and his team to do the right thing at the right time. I am delighted that this bill will give them the powers to do some cooperative work with the police when necessary without compromising their own role. That is simply fantastic. 
Overall the National Party is very very supportive of this bill and we will watch with great interest as the calendar days tick off to see our Australian cousins—our much-loved Australian cousins who along with the South African team hold the top three places in the Super 12—pass their legislation to get the mutual recognition.