Folks,
Re. #427 and #457, have any of you had a look at the Minister's Charter Letter, aka. the current Civil Aviation Act 1988 Minister's S.12 direction, or any of the other Government policy documents that bind CASA and the great majority of Commonwealth Government departments and agencies. Did you carefully check the Minister's Second Reading speech for the Airspace Act 2007???
Perhaps you have done CASA and OAR a great service re. NAS ----- no longer referring to US NAS ---- but maybe that doesn't really change much.
Judging by the whole Class D towers issues, including the draft determinations for Broome and Karratha, or the statements of John McCormick, in many venues, such as Senate Estimates, it looks to me like US NAS is still flavor of the month.
I am not going back to re-read the White Paper, but memory says there were some interesting comments there about airspace.
The reality is that, given the totality of the Air Navigation Act 1920, Civil Aviation Act1988, the Airspace Act 2007, the OBPR mandatory requirements, the Legislative Instruments Act 2003, and Productivity Commission "mandatory guidelines", and the Commonwealth Authorities and Companies Act 1997, the outcome should still look pretty much like US NAS.
But, as I have said several times, the final outcome will be determined by how successful the efforts by the troglodyte lobby.
Universal A, that's what we need, that will eliminate a very high percentage of fatalities and injuries. Of course, it will only do this by eliminating most of GA and small airlines, and make the rest of Australian aviation a luxury mode of transport for the very wealthy.
But!!! Hey, you can't put a value on human life, can you!!
Drop all this techno economic rationalist affordable safety nonsense about risk analysis and cost/benefit justified regulation, ignore the High Court definition of "safety", go for the big prize, unaffordable safety, why not even absolute safety.
Tootle pip!!