Flying Higher, as evidenced by the Norfolk Island ditching report and others since, like the disgraceful community flights matter, as well as the MOU between CASA and ATSB, I doubt whether a full, frank, unbiased, informed, accurate and penetrating report by the ATSB is even possible today. This is especially so in these two matters since they potentially could involve observations, nay criticism, of the actions of other government or semi government agencies.
In three years I would therefore expect pilots and operators to be blamed as well as one or two strictly procedural observations on AsA and perhaps CASA .........which AsA and/or CASA will happily announce have already been corrected by then. I think the days of strict accountability being applied to government, as opposed to poor pilots, are long gone.
‘To put that another way, why wait? We already know that ATSB will flub it’s responsibilities. The Government is not interested in aviation in general, let alone small aircraft. We are just “air pollution “ to them.
Dick is right, no change is possible until there is a big smoking hole in the ground, followed by a royal commission and perhaps not even then.