Agreed, VH-XXX.
Apart from standing guard out front of the flying school just in case Barry was to commit an offence, with only 7 GA FOI's in the Brisbane office, how could they have stopped this flight or others like it?
Maybe not that particular flight, but there were others. Couldn't they have prosecuted him for breaches? Stopped him from advertising? Shut him down?
Honest question because I'm not overly familiar with the Act, but if there's no provision to prosecute a rogue operator then it's not worth the paper it's written on and CASA are not a regulator.
A regulatory body's duties are to maintain compliance to a legislated standard and
enforce the regulations as required, by whatever legal means necessary. From what you see in the real world and read on here (and other places) CASA have been more than happy to pursue other operators in the past with much vim and vigour, allegedly sometimes for nothing more than paperwork violations.
Why was this operator different?
If a regulator is unable or unwilling to regulate then it is nothing more than a drain on the Commonwealth budget. It achieves nothing and serves no purpose.