I think you will find the ATSB's reason for stopping CAIR was as a result of the legal implications that came with it. For over 15 years the BASI/ATSB CAIR system has been a very usefull tool, however in this day and age of litigation, the ATSB had no option but to get rid of it.
I agree that we need a similar system in this country of self reporting, and if we had a system that was based on ASRS in the USA, it could work quite well.
For those that are interested, very breifly, and crudely, the American ASRS is where a report gets reviewed by a panel of experts, made up of ex airline pilots, engineers, etc and a course of action is recommended - usually by way of something to the FAA to promulgate to the industry as a whole to learn by. It's quite a good system. I do however stand to be corrected on this by someone from the USA that has experience with this.