This is exactly what I warned you about many months ago in another thread.
The issue is a lot bigger than simply their ETOPS accreditation. Ironically it was in attempting to acquire that accreditation that the depth of the problems in the maintenance organisation has been revealed. The extra surveillance and reliability systems that are required for ETOPS would have brought every discreet issue in the normal non-ETOPS operation to the surface.
I'm sure many of the engineers that read this site will agree that this isn't some simple problem, particularly not in the casual context of the press release. Parts tracking is at the very heart of the maintenance organisations mandate. This is non-compliance to an extent that is breath-taking. Given that tracking aircraft maintenance and parts is the very backbone of maintenance, I can only imagine what sort of nightmare state the rest of the organisation is in.
To those ex-AN people, and especially the likes of AN LAME, this would be a heart-breaking revelation. Ansett was grounded and subsequently destroyed for an issue significantly less than this, and I might add, an issue which was labelled "non-compliant" by CASA, but later refuted by Boeing and BASI reports. This current issue is an overt, non-contested, blatant breach of the mandate.
If the media knew what ETOPS was then this would be national news.
To answer a question previously asked - yes, many, many parts would be time-expired by now. Many components and rotables have a 12-18 month life, lessened by high utilisation in hours or cycles. These aircraft would be high in both.
CASA's silence is an outrage.