1. A regulation rewrite by a government body that has taken decades longer than anticipated and is still ongoing (and NZ who did similar achieved and implemented decades faster). At what cost? To achieve not a simpler system but a more arcane one.
2. An aviation industry that is struggling to survive. Closures of maintenance, charter and training organisations across the country. Loss of facilities, skills, corporate knowledge. Loss of public benefit that having a viable GA industry provides.
3. A shortage of pilots in the airlines. Australian flying schools disappearing and talk of having to get overseas pilots to fill vacancies because we are not able to train our own. We used to train not just our own pilots but large numbers of overseas pilots.
4. Regional aviation industries, jobs and services disappearing. Higher costs to regional residents for transport and closures of local business and loss of employers.
5. The body responsible for overseeing the industry keeps growing larger and is imposing more and more onerous restrictions on the industry and there is much doubt within the industry about the actual safety value of those restrictions.
6. Huge antipathy and distrust between the regulatory body and the industry it serves.
7. An industry in crisis that wants a regulatory body that includes in its charter some responsibility for assisting maintain the viability of the industry it serves instead of its current narrow focus on imposing regulation without any need to consider the practical impact of those regulations on the viability of the industry.
8. An industry whose health and viability depends on maintaining a high level of safety but that feels it is having onerous and often poorly thought out regulations imposed on it that are not so much about practical safety outcomes as the appearance and ease of enforcement by the regulator.
9. Governments over decades that have washed their hands and allowed the regulator to continue to act without regard for the viability of the industry because they are too scared to make decisions that may impact safety (or the perception of safety).
10 Handing over of commonwealth aviation assets that have served a vital role in the aviation industry (and its benefit to the community) to private hands who then develop and those assets to maximise their profits in ways that reduce or remove aviation from the facility.
Surely this would make for a great 4 corners program. Particularly close to an election.