"The question remains though why have an SOP contrary to a POH. Why? And then why amend it following the ditching?"
How many Ops Manuals have you read ?, how many CASA folk have you dealt with ?.
In many many Ops Manuals there are items that are different to the POH, does not make them illegal, it just needs to be justifiable.
Amend it following the ditching, well because for the many many years leading up to this incident, no one else previously ran out of fuel shortly after take off at Brampton Island, there was this incident and CASA probably reacted, by making the organisation try something else.
At some point some CASA FOI (experienced Pilot no doubt) had previously signed off on this procedure as acceptable.
So why did it happen on this occasion ?, simple, because the fuel selector was selected to an empty tank, why, well if it was a cultural or Ops Manual problem, it have happened before this fated flight.
"there is no single person/factor to blame", two , 1) who trained her, did they teach her what she needed to know, 2) did she follow the training and SOPs.........., IMHO definately did not do No 2.
Blushing, well I find it hard to believe you are unable to see the facts, an aeroplane landed in the water, due to fuel exhaustion, yet there was lots of fuel onboard.
Yet landing on the water dead stick in a PA32 was not a SOP and the aircraft was mechanically servicable........if you can't see that, I'll not waste anymore time talking to the impared.