Thanks for that Gaunty and I appreciate your work and input.
But surely all these various agencies knew all this would happen, and if not why not? Why, when they opened Pandora's box, did they not put a delay on all of this eg let CFIs issue student licences until they could actually find a streamlined way to process them? Let the regional offices continue to issue licences until they actually had the resources in Canberra to do it?
Instead they forged ahead and let the flying training and aviation tourism industries grind to a halt. Consultation? It was obvious to industry that this would be a complete mess but I don't recall being consulted, or having a single letter to a pollie ackowledged let alone answered.
What I would like to know, is that now they seem to have admitted "er... there seems to be a bit of a problem here...." are they going to compensate those GA businesses that have lost out? Yeah right. For some it may be too late to ever hope to recoup the losses from not being able to do full time training of locals or overseas students and all the cancelled flying holidays etc, and rebuild confidence around the world that Australia is a good place to fly, rather than a bureaucratic joke where you are a terrorist until proven innocent. All this has meant years of marketing down the drain.
I agree with WIZ, that Bloggs doing his first solo, or Johnny Tourist going up to Shark Bay to look at some dolphins, or geez, even Wiz returning to an RPT aerodrome after a hard day mustering moo moos is not such a threat to national security that it has to cost millions of dollars to an industry that can ill afford it.
