I’m a big fan of Senator MacDonald, but…
Unless Senator MacDonald is about to announce the introduction of legislation to change something substantial about CASA or its powers or functions, rhetorical flourishes about ‘disbanding’ CASA do her no service at all. CASA couldn’t give a toss about any of the huffing and puffing of Senators at Estimates or Inquiry hearings. It doesn’t change thing one for CASA.
Senator MacDonald is a member of a thing called ‘the government’ in a thing called ‘the Federal Parliament’, which changes our society by making or amending or repealing things called ‘laws’. CASA is a creation of one of those laws, which also sets out CASA’s powers and functions. I’m not aware of any proposal by the government of which Senator MacDonald is a part to legislate for any substantial change to that law. (I don’t rule out the possibility of another pre-election stunt that will be the usual smoke and mirrors.)
And the carriage of passengers for hire or reward, other than under the authority of an AOC, has been a ‘no no’ for some time, even if the pilot is the holder of a CPL. There are always at least three sides to each story, and I’ll bet London to a brick that the person who wrote to Senator MacDonald didn’t tell all sides of the story. (One issue of substance seemed to me to be the inordinate amount of time it takes for the investigators to intimidate their way to a prosecutable case. A related long-term issue is that Qantas has apparently never committed even a strict liability offence. Remarkable. Truly remarkable.)
CASA’s always going to be happy for Senators to ‘stand up’ for these kinds of complainants, because if the CDPP decides to proceed with a prosecution and the prosecution gets up, the Senators are going to look silly. The prosecutions are for offences against a law made or not disallowed by … you guessed it.