There’s always a perfectly bureaucratic reason to do nothing. Like the hospital without patients...
There have always been complaints about the number of NOTAMs overall. Include FIR NOTAM (as you normally should check), and you have many pages.
That would be solved if Airservices programmed NIS so that pilots could tick e.g. “Civilian” or “VFR” boxes so that all the irrelevant FLIP and IFR stuff was excluded. But I guess that would involve Airservices doing work to make life easier (and potentially safer) for nobodies - citizens who pay tax.
Many locations do not have a NOTAM service per CASR, so NOTAM can't be issued anyway.
”Can’t” is not the correct word. It’s a man-made rule. A rule that can be changed.
Only authorised persons can issue a NOTAM, and at country ADs that is usually only the AD OPR.
Yes - I can see how a NOTAM initiated by a PIC stranded somewhere would cause a safety risk. I guess that if a PIC called Airservices to say a giant sink hole had opened up at place with no NOTAM service, Airservices would simply refuse to do publish a NOTAM about it - well done! That’s the kind of ‘service’ that contributes to ‘safety’.
There was also feedback at one point that many refuelling agents did not want the responsibility of arranging, amending and cancelling NOTAMs, their feelings being that pilots should contact them to ascertain fuel and their availability, callout fee etc.
Funny thing about the way Australia works - heaven forbid that a service would be proactively improved for the nobodies that pay for it. Hence the earlier point about these things contributing to the demise of GA.
The regulator - CASA, not Airservices - position was that the introduction of issuing NOTAMs re fuel could lead to the interpretation of no NOTAM = fuel available, which may not be the case, and that instead NOTAMs should not normally be issued and the practice of pilots telephoning to ascertain fuel availability should continue.
Typical logic of a regulator with no corporate competence and no corporate integrity. The thought processes attributed to us stupid nobodies magically results in an outcome that’s comfy for the bureaucracy. I wonder how often folks in CASA have rung one of those numbers on a Sunday morning.
If the policy has changed, the practice of arranging NOTAMs may not be widespread (and I'm not sure a requirement could be imposed on refuelling agents anyway), so common sense says never rely on whether or not someone has issued a NOTAM.
Good ‘ol “common sense”. The last refuge ...
One wonders, given all that you’ve said above, how it was possible for the unsafe anarchy quoted by outandabout at #5 to have been published.