This latest outburst from CASA may have been triggered by a recent legal challenge to a 'show cause' notice that they issued on a certain now-defunct operator. CASA was right, the operator was wrong but it seems they need to justify their action anyway.
It has always been a nonsense that lower safety standards could be applied to charter. If an operator takes money via any source to cart live human flesh, the standards applied to reasonably ensure that the flesh remains alive for the duration of the flight should be the same no matter whose money was taken. Whether it's a schedule, advertised or not, to fixed terminals, once an hour or once a year, if money is exchanged to move a citizen, it is public transport. The only moot point then is the insertion of 'regular' into RPT. Xmas comes once a year, so that is 'regular' too....
In fact because of its very ad hoc nature, charter is actually more demanding than RPT and if a double standard is to be applied, it is charter that should require the better prepared and trained crews.
The sooner we ditch all the confusing layers of CARs, CAOs, CAAPs etc and just have understandable regulations similar to what the Yanks have had for 40 years, the better.