President John Jones Speech

The Honourable Nathan Guy, Ministers, Members of Parliament,and guests and members of the Association welcome

Today is the 70th anniversary of the Apex of the Battle of Britain; to our service personnel present let me acknowledge your past and present contribution to New Zealand and the development of our aviation industry.

This industry has now grown to be worth over $10Bn pa representing 7% of GDP; involves around 1000 businesses and directly employs over 23,500 New Zealanders. The sector exports $3.8Bn. It is a much bigger exporter than marine $0.5Bn, wine $1Bn, seafood $1.2Bn and horticulture $2Bn.
This growth has been under pinned by two key factors:
• a strong airline, in our case a financially strong and competitive Air New Zealand. We cannot overstate the importance to the national and regional economies of having an airline system based in this country. Over half the $10Bn we spoke of above comes directly from Air New Zealand: and

• a highly credible airforce. Their credibility opens’ doors internationally for our domestic businesses; it contributes substantially to the growth of regional businesses and it creates opportunities for innovation.

We know without a step change in the way we do business a growth rate of 5% pa over the next five years is obtainable. This would increase the industry’s contribution to around $12.5 Bn per year however our aspiration is to grow this industry by over 10pa per annum.

A recent industry report, sponsored by New Horizons on behalf the New Zealand Trade and Enterprise concludes that accelerating growth requires:
o Firstly, industry restructuring and alignment with “one voice”. Today I am pleased to announce that our industry association AIA strongly endorses moving rapidly down this path and secondly
o A strong partnership between government and industry ensuring policies foster and protect the known dynamics (Air New Zealand and the Airforce) while concurrently exploiting the new opportunities of the likes of:

 The “space industry” Rocket Lab and NASA being an example
• Development of titanium powders at the Bay of Plenty Polytechnic
• All aspects of aviation training via an Aviation New Zealand Training Academy
• Export from the “weightless” economy of consulting

We are concerned that our regulatory regimes are acting as a drag and not looking at how we compete through regulation. There is a very strong possibility that unless there are a refocus many of our most innovative businesses will go off shore. Once this happens it is very difficult to retain the IP here in New Zealand. It is true that it easier for our most innovative businesses to sell to the US Defence forces than our own. This is particularly true in the new industries of electronic tracking and unmanned vehicles.

For our business to be an integral part of the largest military in the world creates huge possibilities but the point is that those possibilities are exploited by US industry and not New Zealand specialized manufacturing industry.

As mentioned a moment ago today this Association endorsed a plan to create “one voice” and one channel for government to speak to industry. We will be asking government to join in partnership with that plan.

The plan is about ensuring our industry operates at the highest sustainable levels of safety while concurrently maximizing our contribution to creating wealth and jobs for New Zealanders.

Our perception is that presently New Zealand’s aviation “safety agenda” is confused. There is a need to very clearly restate where the responsibilities of the State lies relative to the operator.

For example the recent Auditor General’s report lacked context. The Civil Aviation Authority had only recently rated up there with the most credible jurisdiction in the globe in the way it discharges its obligations but reading the AOG report yet you could easily conclude New Zealand’s industry was unsafe, poorly regulated and exposed the travelling public to unnecessary risk,

This conclusion is fundamentally flawed and reports of this nature do enormous damage to our international credibility and will compromise our ability to grow.

We are not saying that CAA performance can’t improve it can but will only do so if there is an absolute alignment of vision, implementation and delivery – no one party owns the answer to improving safety performance its about us ALL contributing our knowledge and our experiences.

It is extraordinarily dangerous for Wellington to assume it is the sole guardian of that agenda- the reality is that it is not and should never be.

Tonight we would like to honour an individual and a company who demonstrate global best practice in their respective fields.

To night we honour Warren Sattler, Chief Flying Instructor at Ardmore Flying School – the largest flying school in Auckland. Warren is known as a tenacious advocate on behalf of flight training safety- speak to some of our colleagues at Airways, CAA, the Met service.

Warren receives life membership of this Association. I would like to invite Warren forward to say a few words

Thank you Warren.

Before presenting our premier safety award I would like to introduce the Hon Nathan Guy Minister for Transport Safety Nathan…..

Thank you Minister if you wouldn’t mid staying here with me for a minute …….

The second of our awards is to Volcanic Airsafari’s a tourist flight company based in Rotorua. This amazing company has operated for over 25 years and is receiving recognition of attaining this level of safe operation – 25 years without “accident” at the industry’s highest Platinum level.