Sasless - I think the answer lies in your second post - 'the training guy says they have met all the requirements and engineering says his part of shop is all in order.'
Meeting requirements by ticking boxes a la Health and safety fiasco does not guarantee safety, only covers your ass against prosecution. I have to do an hour a month IF - I can satisfy the requirement by bimbling around the sky with the holds and stab in or I can exercise my IF skills by doing it all stab out with hard exercises dictated by the co-pilot - which is most likely to help me avoid an accident when IIMC?
Any engineering manager who can sit back and say everything is OK is clearly not in touch with the front-line of his engineering empire - there are always issues that need resolving and never enough money/time to do things as well as humanly possible.
If the attitudes you portray really are from an Oz airline then the safety guy is probably correct in his assessment since the management seems complacent because they have merely covered their backsides by meeting legal minimum requirements.
If I was MD I would make sure I visited all the locations, incognito if possible, to see for myself what was actually going on at the coal face.