Aviation Critical In Many Regional Areas

Aviation is an area of long-standing interest for the BlueSalt team, as we understand how critical it is to many regional communities. Following our submission to the Australian Government on the Aviation White Paper in March 2023 (under our previous name Anna Dixon Consulting), we’ve stepped up our advocacy in this area. To contribute to the Aviation Green Paper, we attended two of the virtual roundtables – airports and airport development, and regional aviation – and worked on an evidence-based written submission.

We again collaborated with regional health provider Fly2Health on this work, following our joint submission into the terms of reference for the Aviation White Paper. Fly2health have a commitment to provide equal healthcare through their visiting aviation health service into regional communities. Founded in Western Australia, they have been delivering otherwise non-existent, consistent, and desperately needed NDIS allied health services to people living in regional and rural Western Australia, New South Wales and Queensland since 2021.

Aviation Green Paper Submission

We commend the Australian Government for taking a generational view of aviation in Australia and addressing planning to 2050. In summary, our response to the Aviation Green Paper calls for:

• Greater nuance and introduction of best practice stakeholder engagement in aviation regulation in Australia, particularly on issues affecting general aviation (GA).
• An independent review to identify the root cause of issues with the regulator that have led to the impacts on GA, and recommendations for improvement.
• Fully quantifying the scale and scope of the GA sector, which will in turn assist with regional development and effective decision-making.
• Targeted capability building and supports for GA business owners and operators, particularly those regionally based, looking to the success of programs in other industries.
• Regional and remote aviation to be a cross-cutting theme in the White Paper, as every theme is relevant to regional Australia but will have different impacts to the capital cities.
• An independent social study of the Australian aviation workforce in relation to wellbeing and mental health, including contributing factors (particularly in developing a baseline) and independent recommendations to address any issues found.

You can read our submission in full on our website.

Our Impact

Did you know? Each year we dedicate our time and expertise to research and advocacy that benefits regional communities.

It’s part of our social impact commitment, and you can read more about this in our impact report.