Algie:
Ah....the sheer joy of seeing post after post by the morally pure, the unsullied, the international experts, the far-seeing, all-knowing wisdom of the ages from those who, dare I say it, fear not the risk of having the plank in their own eye pointed out as they make grandiose claims of the splinters in the collective eyes of CASA.
If you are concerned that some working for the regulator have what you think are wonderful worling conditions....., then join them. Mind you pilots have always seen other fields as greener so think hard before you resign from you current job.
But if you have hard objective evidence of wrong-doing......actual evidence........go to the Commonwealth Ombudsman or the Federal Police or the media or your member of parliament (or a Senator).
Just don't for heaven's sake sit on the sidelines trumpeting your own moral and professional clarity while bemoaning that fact that for some reason that escapes me, the fix is in for every sector of aviation except those for which you are responsible.
Eunuchs know what to do, they even know what should be done, may even imagine how to do it themselves......but in the end they do nothing.
If you believe in aviation's future do something other than whinge. Otherwise, prepare, metaphorically one trusts, to have your equipment removed and learn how to spell eunuch.
I have sympathy with your point of view Algie. However I have some caveats.
All of us, I assume, are interested in the vision of safety first and foremost. The problem with the act and regulations is that they do not preclude the achievement of safety by prohibiting aviation entirely. That is the ultimate problem; there is no "consistent with" or "recognizing the economic benefit of" clause. To be fair to CASA, that is a problem for their good staff as well as the regulated.
Where your entreaty fails is your suggestion to either:
1. Join casa. In which casa I am immediately and irrevocably conflicted.
2. Come up with evidence, knowing that CASA is prepared to spend millions to either discredit your evidence or worse still render it inadmissible. To put that another way, I don't believe I can legally record a discussion with Casa staff and use the recording as evidence in a court of law.
3. Complain to an ombudsman - don't make me laugh.
The reality Algie is that anyone who wants to challenge CASA about anything had better have about Five Hundred thousand in spending money behind them for starters.
Furthermore, it appears that many CASA staff cannot be trusted if the multiple threads on PPrune have any basis whatsoever in fact.
My own experience of CASA? Service with a smile. But then again that is my brother in laws experience in Italy with the mafia owned banks.
My own plan is that the licence and log book will be burned if there is the slightest conflict with CASA since I don't like the idea of ending up with a criminal record.
To put it another way: CASA scares me. it's unaccountable.