The accident occurred just kilometres from his family property, Clifton, which sits at the northern end of the Young airport.

But nobody was in a better position to fight for reforms to aviation safety in Australia than the then Member for Hume, who eventually became Federal Transport minister.

At first a lone voice in parliament and industry, John advocated for across the board reforms to the management of aviation safety in Australia.

He’ll tell you today he was up against it - virtually shouted down in parliament, threatened by airline industry leaders, even journalists who felt he was taking it too far.

Sharp warned parliament that Seaview Air was another Monarch waiting to happen. Five months later - on   October 2 1994 - an Aero Commander 690B aircraft operated by Seaview Air, crashed into the Pacific Ocean, fatally injuring the nine persons on board. 

Then people started to listen to John Sharp.

“The Monarch crash was probably the catalyst to the most significant reforms to the management of aviation safety in Australia,” Mr Sharp told The Witness yesterday.

“The organisation that administered airline safety was broken up, the head dismissed, the insurance company eventually went under and the boss of that company is now in jail, albeit not in relation to that tragic event,” he said.

He admitted the crash in his home town involving so many people known to him motivated him to do more about it than he probably would otherwise have done.

What was most extraordinary, he said, was the response from inside the Civil Aviation Authority - who were at that time responsible for airline safety in Australia .

“I can remember my chief of staff John Wallace meeting people at the Woden bus interchange with a rolled up Canberra Times, and swapping it for another rolled up Canberra times that contained a file,” he said.

“There were people inside that organisation who were clearly despondent about the inappropriate operations of their employer who had concerns and nobody to raise them with,” he said.

“So we became very knowledgeable about the inside workings of that organisation,”

Reform started after the Seaview flight went down, when he would have rated aviation safety a six out of 10. Today Mr Sharp says it is as good as any first world country in the world.

“It competes fairly against the UK, Europe, Canada and the US in terms of safety at the top level.

The task, he says is by no means finished, and maintains we should be aspiring to the highest level of safety.

Since retiring from parliament in 1998, Mr Sharp has continued his involvement with the transport industry and, is a former Chairman of the Aviation Safety Foundation of Australia.

In 2006 he received a Presidential Citation for Aviation Safety from the US- based Flight Safety Foundation - the first Australian to receive this award.