In fairness, I should say that I’ve had considerable success in complaining to the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s Office about bureaucrats who were labouring under the misconception that their compliance with the law was optional. Strong and effective action by the Ombudsman’s Office recalibrated the bureaucrats and I was consequently paid money to which I was entitled. But that was over two decades ago.
Since then the Commonwealth Ombudsman has also become:
- the Postal Industry Ombudsman
- the Overseas Students Ombudsman
- the Private Health Insurance Ombudsman, and
- the VET Student Loans Ombudsman.
You (Sandy) have identified elsewhere the annual budget of the Commonwealth Ombudsman. My view is that the budget would have to be ten times that in order for the Ombudsman to do, properly, all of the jobs the Commonwealth Ombudsman's Office is now supposed to do.
All of the phaffing around on Glen's matter indicate to me an organisation which is, at best, out of its depth. It's not that hard to work out what CASA knew - constructively if not actually - about APTA's legal relationship with and operational control of the people, premises and aircraft to be engaged in operations the subject of each application for a variation to APTA's AOC to cover those operations. As I've said before, that was (and remains) the very purpose of an AOC variation process.