Before the conspiracy theories start, let may say clearly that I knew nothing about the Airservices proposal until I saw a copy of the Minister’s press release.
However if it is a move to trial the US FAA approved non-prescriptive NAS UNICOM system I am all for it.
Looking at this and other threads on the subject it is obvious that the whole UNICOM issue was highjacked by people who wanted to create jobs for retired air traffic controllers and FSO’s. The proven FAA system as accepted by Federal cabinet has no prescriptive limitations on what a UNICOM may do.
Because of this, there are no insurance requirements or problems at all. The USA and Canada have many thousands of UNICOMs, which have been operating for decades without any problems - common sense prevails. They will give traffic information in any way they want to as it is up to the pilot to decide the information to accept. The non-prescriptive US system is a superb improver in safety however there has been enormous resistance to even trialling the system here.
If Airservices are going to force a safer system on a reluctant industry then good on them.