Give Skates a ring and ask him.
To ‘fix’ CASA, the legislation has to be fixed. That starts with the Civil Aviation Act. Neither the Board nor the CEO has any power to change the Act.
You might have heard reference to the ‘Iron Ring’ as if it’s a bunch of people. The ‘Iron Ring’ is, in fact, the Civil Aviation Act and all of the legislation that says what CASA’s job is and how it is to be done. Unless and until that changes, CASA will continue creating endless complexity. It keeps getting paid hundreds of millions of dollars every year to do it.
(There are plenty of people in CASA ready and willing to apply the Iron Ring to newbie CEOs and Chairman of the CASA Board. I call it the ‘straightjacket’ rather than the Iron Ring, because the former is an allusion to a lunatic asylum and that’s more apt.)
The Parliament can fix it. The Parliament created CASA and the Parliament decides what CASA’s powers and functions are, and the way in which they are to be exercised and performed. That’s one of the primary points of the Civil Aviation Act.
The Minister isn’t the Parliament, but the Minister can introduce legislation to amend the Civil Aviation Act, as can Senators. So far, those amendments have changed little in substance. That (along with the hundreds of millions each year) tells CASA that so far as the Parliament is concerned, CASA’s doing a great job.