Are we maybe getting a little off topic? And not to mention a bit outrageous?
Coming back to the world of the normal, no one is going to endorse their MR with "The aircraft is painted white and I prefer red", I challenge someone to find that entry on any MR anywhere, so bit of a ridiculous question to ask. Same goes with "the aircraft is hard to land", once again, I really couldn't see even the most junior rookie pilot adding this to an MR.
BUT There are things that i've seen junior rookie pilots add such as "Left Fuel Gauge Overreading", now that was a "Grounding Item" but lets face it, NOT A SAFETY ISSUE, if you have a dipstick and know your fuel burn, have a Fuel Flow Meter then its not really that big a deal, heck, if everyone put down that particular item on their MR half of Australias GA Single Fleet would probably be grounded. But it is something worthy of investigating and getting fixed the next time theirs a LAME looking over the aircraft, thusly the reason for snag lists. Alot of MELs would probably allow for such a thing to be U/S temporarily, but without that MEL it is still illegal cause of regulations, but not a safety issue with a calibrated dipstick.
This particular pilot who put down the Fuel Gauge got a reaming from the Chief Pilot, not for entering it into the MR but for not simply asking someone with more experience first, he did so and it wasn't till the next day someone went to fly it that it was found on the MR and the damned thing was grounded, luckily we had other Aircraft available and weren't particularly busy that day so it wasn't that great a deal.
My point is, and i'm trying to get back to Barrier and thusly a little on topic, does Barrier have any kind of Maintenance available in Horn Island? If so then when something becomes "U/S" it should be brought to the attention of a Senior Pilot and then brought up with the Engineers to determine if its an actual safety issue or not and then if necessary added to the MR and signed off by the engineer as being known but not an issue. If there is no Maintenance available for them I could understand a lack of MR U/S Items being written ("IF" this is indeed even what has happened, I don't think anyone has come out and said with 100% certainty that this is CASAs main issue) as it would be pointless to ground an aircraft for a non-item just to cover ones ass just incase one FOI decides to probe that little grey area left by that paragraph 10.1 that SDT Mentioned.
At the same time, an operator like Barrier doesn't have any great excuses for not having an MEL that is appropriately written up for their Aircraft, I understand its an expensive exercise, but so is either one aircraft or an entire fleet being grounded for not entering MR Items to satisfy normal regulatory requirements. On this same vein, does Barrier have MELs written up for all their Aircraft?
Also Sunfish, whilst your posts are usually well thought out i'd have to say any Pilot who takes off after hitting a Kangaroo without it being inspected/reported first is asking for any punishment that comes their way, its one of those things that simply is not the worth the risk and cannot be properly assessed by the average Pilot. Lets face it, between Pay Phones, Telstra NextG, HF and VHF there aren't a lot of strips regularly used that don't have some kind of communications available back to base. I vaguely remember a story a few years ago of someones homemade aircraft crashing on their base turn and almost killing the pilot involved, the reason being that he had designed the cockpit canopy an inch too high which disrupted the airflow over the elevator causing a loss of control, it was a simple thing that as a normal pilot would never be noticed, it was only revealed after the accident and it was examined closely by qualified people.