Blacky
A delightful coat-tug; knowing you know that removing GA 50 Nm from the cities would mean an ultimate drought of CPL/ATPL - one merely watches to see who will take your bait
Mara & Wiz
In a way you touch on a point of interest. If one notes the failure trend of the USA car industry to the Japanese, manufacturing industry to the Chinese, the banking industry to greed, and so on - their leadership of "world's best practice" is questionable. The parallel is that their NAS is an amalgam of different issues to Australia - constitutional rights, massive economies of scale due a much higher population/pilot versus area ratio, radar coverage, and so on. I find it difficult to believe we must blindly follow the USA NAS out here.
Perhaps, however, this should be called the "Post Mortem" thread. None of the issues Dick raises are new - where was everyone when they occurred?