And do not forget the once-thriving “fly yourself” air tours that were very popular here. Foreign pilots could get a certificate of validation, attend a briefing, do a few circuits to ensure competence, and launch on a round Australia tour in a C172 or whatever.
Then we got the ASIC.
The Yanks were the ones that got zapped by the bad guys, not us. But they still do not have the equivalent of the ASIC, and amazingly, to the best of my knowledge, no one has deliberately crashed a bugsmasher into a crowd, despite plenty of opportunity to do so.