Howdy 4dogs – long time no chat.
I apologise for my discourtesy in not responding to your observation in the other thread, that:
CASA buying another lawyer will not fix anything unless they buy a competent regulator to provide the policy for the lawyer to legislate.
I agree completely.
I think that in the various threads that have popped up criticising the legendary complexity of the Australian rules, I have consistently said that no one can turn a muddle-headed policy, or no policy at all, into crystal clear rules.
The fly that
I was casting in making the comment related to the skills that the regulator is recruiting. Most of the 9% increase over the last year has comprised a whole bunch of people who ain’t pilots or engineers. Slowly but steadily the government is moving in the professional bureaucrats to get the authority working again.
Technical experts pretending to be professional bureaucrats often score ‘own goals’. I watched GI Joe in front of the Senate Committee recently. A senator asked him about an AOC he’d signed that purported to take effect weeks
before he’d signed it. The point was
completely lost on him! Uber spin doctor Rob Elder had to step in to put a fig leaf over that little bit of corruption. Makes you wonder what other documents GI Joe has gormlessly signed, doesn’t it?
How will these changes increase Mick Toller’s accountability? They won’t. Mr “I was overseas at the time/that is being considered by the board” will simply change his story to “I was overseas at the time/that is being considered by the Minister”. And we’ll now have to wait a couple of years for these “reforms” to bed down. Mr Toller will continue to play private school prefect to the Anderson headmaster, with Anderson remaining clueless as to what’s really going. The people who actually run the authority – the professional bureaucrats Gemmell/Elder/Ilyk – will continue to do so, on the instructions of Ministerial staffers.
Like you
I also failed to understand how arranging a court to conduct a merits review in lieu of the AAT in any way alters the "Judge, Jury and Executioner" arrangements.
Anyone can ask the AAT or the Federal Court for a stay under the existing rules. The Federal Court does not and will not conduct merits review. (Airworthiness Directives are going to be an interesting are – can’t they have the effect of grounding aircraft?) The administrative fine system has been in the rules for years. Now we’re going to wait a few more years for a points system?
The only guaranteed outcome as a consequence of these changes (if they really occur – we haven’t seen any legislation yet) is that there will be more work.
For lawyers.
It will be off to court every time, automatically, instead of at the application of the licence or certificate holder.
Thanks John.
