What's happened is this in summary:
1. CASA has distanced itself from the dude who got you sacked and CASA is willing to apologise to you (Glen) that loose cannon dude shouldn't have done what he did.
2. On the regulatory issues, CASA has said to the Ombudsman's office that we, CASA, are the authority and we say the rules allow us to require APTA to provide a bunch of information in order to be satisfied the rules as we interpret them are being complied with by APTA, and APTA did not provide that information. The Ombudsman's office has accepted that.
Unfortunately, I've seen this outcome across a number of areas where the Ombudsman's office is asked to investigate in the last half a dozen or so years. The Ombudsman's office just accepts what 'the authority' or 'the Department' says about some legal issue without actually reading the legislation or forming its own view about what it's been told about the effect of the legislation.
About the only shining light of a Commonwealth organisation that conducts fearless, competent and in-depth investigations and produces corresponding reports at the moment is the Auditor-General and the Australian National Audit Office. Unfortunately, it doesn't 'audit' the kinds of circumstances that crushed APTA into the ground. Its audits focus on the spending of Commonwealth money through e.g. grants (think sports grants rorts and car park grants rorts) or procurements (think $30million for a $3million block of land). Further, the government is of course trying to starve the Auditor-General and the ANAO of resources in order to reduce its capacity to highlight the many unlawful and incompetent actions of government agencies.
Last edited by Lead Balloon; 26th Sep 2021 at 23:42.