my vote is: neither clear nor concise.
They have been re-writing the regulations to make them clearer and more concise for decades - a project that has always been 'soon to be completed' since the early 1990s. I think the last statement to the recent senate review was there was only 5% left to do.
In those decades the volume of regulations has been "concisified" into a plethora of extra documents, it went from CARs and CAOs into CARs, CAOs, CASRs, CAAPs, (many of which are now individually larger than the original documents they were meant to concisely replace) and they have also been simplified to the point where you need a PhD in law to understand if you have exceeded your flight and duty times.
Rather than do a survey, hand your lawyer friend copies of the CARs, CASRs, CAOs and AIPs - he/she may need a wheelbarrow - and ask them to quickly find, if under the law as it stands now, can a student pilot who last had a dual check 15 days ago, be sent solo? If they are struggling, guide them to CASR 61.115. Then when they think they have the answer, tell him them they also need to look up all the exemptions to the regulations that have had to be made when it was realised the changes were too hastily drawn up without an understanding of the implications and show them "Civil Aviation Safety Regulations 1998 CASA EX46/18 — Dual Flight Checks before Solo Flights (Student Pilots) Exemption 2018". Then show them how many of these exemptions there are.
Then ask them: "how a humble flying instructor (without legal training) can keep on top of all these regulations and exemptions?"
CASA have a regulatory system that focuses on adding more and more convoluted regulation with a focus on forcing compliance and finding individual culpability and resultant punishment to improve safety.
Instructors are required (by CASA) to do Human Factors Training (under threat of $10k fine if not complying). That compulsory training strongly stresses the need to develop a safety culture that encourages self reporting of failures without fear of retribution, that fosters openness about safety failings to find underlying systemic issues and to continually enhance safety.
This seems to me to be ludicrous. CASA Left Hand: "Be open and honest and don't fear punishment for failure. That is the safety culture we want"
CASA Right hand: "If we find you didn't follow a regulation buried inches deep in volume 5 of the CASR, you will be fined and sanctioned"
rant over. Simple answer - count me in the 80%!
