Can you believe this? One of our Captains showed me his 2, yes TWO, ASICs the other day. He'd just renewed his at QF and had been told the new one couldn't give him the necessary access to the buildings, carparks, aerobridges, GOD's office, etc, so he could keep the old one!!!
Mine was recently renewed... not for 2 years, but for 15 months. "We're staggering them", she said. "I thought you went through all that 2 years ago", I said. So the whole renewal process starts again in 12 months. Jeez. Oh, and mine DOES give me all necessary access, so go figure.
I asked her "since all this started, how many QF pilots have actually had their ASIC refused?" You can imagine the answer.
What a bureaucratic shambles.
Well, at least via the QF process we do get actually them in a timely manner, unlike you poor buggers in GA. But I guess the Canberra bureaucrats wouldn't really tolerate missing/erroneous/expired red tags around the necks of jet RPT pilots. It's good to see that the Einsteins will turn a blind eye for a while at places like Victoria River Downs, Hooker Creek, etc.... But that'd better only be for a few months - no more than that, there are real security risks out there otherwise....
Be alert but not alarmed, right?!