Ask yourself, SD. Which rule doesn't warrant your standard.
Meteorological conditions perhaps?
Howabout, access to airspace?
A simple thing like enough fuel?
Aeroplane correctly and legally loaded?
I am talking about rules and procedures, man! Black or White!
You either obey a rule or you break it!
In this case, we have bean-counters that judge the risk of reducing a service to a certain level that will increase the probability of an incident. The RISK is applying a level of service that will be ENOUGH to mitigate that event.
The bean counters are wishing to put a set of rules in place that will not prevented an event from happening...even though you follow the rules there is now a risk of a certain event happening...because of that risk you must now perform a procedure that is used in a lower level of airspace managment (Read this as NO MANAGMENT) to prevent that event from happening.....Statisticly and experimentally tested, this procedure has been proven to be not totally effective to prevent such an event.
Without equipping your RAA rego'd aircraft with the correct equipment and train yourself to an equivalent standard of professionalism you can give ANY chance of entering airspace higher than CTAF a long kiss goodnight!
The perceived STANDARD of RAA is not high enough to be allowed into higher levels of service...there is a real risk to other users because of this. Until this perception is changed by example of standard achieved then RAA has bucklys!
Don't come on here and try and hijack an argument about cutting a level of service equating to locking out of perceived cowboys. Black or White, sunshine...either you can do it or you can't!
NO E WITHOUT SURVEILLANCE!