Imo this article is somewhat simplistic with regards to the laying of blame here. The PIC was a product of his "upbringing" there, and if my memory serves me right he was an FO for a whole 12 mths before the move to the LHS. I'd lay a lot of it at the feet of the training dept and CASA for what I'd say was virtually no oversight because it was deemed not worthy of their time as it was air ambulance. By the looks of it no proper flt planning for an operation stretching the range capability of the a/c as well.
He screwed up, but so did CASA and the company. CASA allowed the company to ran a substandard operation and blaming the pilot was to deflect blame from their lack of oversight.
Btw, comparing a pilot and a surgeon is way off the mark. The surgeon has almost complete control over what they do, a pilot does legally, but practically that's a different story.