Blackhands comments may be safely dismissed since he has admitted he makes money out of "interpreting" the current regulations for the rest of us. This is perfectly legal, however one should point out that the more convoluted, confusing, ambiguous and deceptive the regulations are, the more his services are required.
To put it another way, "well he would say that, wouldn't he?" applies to everything he writes.
I would not characterize his behaviour as corrupt, but the current CASA and ATSB behaviour is an open invitation to official corruption - which thrives on poorly drafted regulations that give public servants latitude in "interpreting" things. That is the subtext of phelans article in my opinion.
To put that another way, if the law and regulations are not applied identically in all cases but depend on the menstrual cycle of the FOI involved, then that is corrupt.
If the Gillard Governemnt will not act, then perhaps the attention of the FAA and ICAO should be drawn to the state of CASA and the ATSB.
For a start, the revelation that ATSB passes identifying information to CASA immediately terminates its usefulness since nobody in their right mind will now report anything that they can successfully conceal.