Frank. I think you are wrong. Underpinning nearly all posts in this thread and media debate is an implied expectation of a strong, competent and accountable regulator, empowered by simple, unambiguous, appropriate and effective safety based legislation.
We have inappropriate and appallingly drafted aviation legislation, incompetent and untrained regulatory staff, ineffective management, managed by series of deplorably incompetent Ministers - including the current CEO and Minister.
The regulatory reform – twenty years and according to Clapton, hundreds of millions of dollars – has had more starts than Phar Lap and appears to have again stalled.
The following comment in Senate Hansard of the Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Legislation Committee hearings of 14 Feb 2005 aptly summarises both the regulatory reform process and the CASA CEO’s competence and capacity to manage that process:
Senator MARK BISHOP—When do you think those regulations will go to the minister?
Mr Byron—I anticipate we would start sending some of them from about the middle of this year. I do not see this delaying the overall program excessively. We have an action item to develop a plan to forward to the minister about when we plan to have them to the minister, and I assume that plan would be done in the next couple of months. I would be hopeful that it would not be long after early 2006 that most of the draft rules are delivered to the minister.
Ostensibly, the purpose of the Senate Inquiry was:
• to examine the effectiveness of CASA's governance structure; and
• to consider ways to strengthen CASA's relations with industry and ensure CASA meets community expectations of a firm safety regulator.
There were many excellent submissions to the Senate Inquiry and it would be detrimental to the Senate’s credibility if they were not to take serious account of those submissions.
The cynic in me suspects an underlying political agenda.