ICAO report
Someone recently posted a link that pointed to an audit recently undertaken by ICAO looking at CASA's effectiveness, and apparently the conclusions aren't good (haven't looked at it myself). I would have thought this would be the perfect tool to (a) set some context, and (b) provide you with some useful material about the shortcomings of Australia's legal framework for aviation. In a sense, many of the answers might already be in this document.