It’s obvious what’s happening. As it increasingly dawns on everyone that the regulatory reform program is terminally ill and will soon die, the only way to give effect to some bright idea that’s in draft regulations that may never be made is to instead give effect to it by changing existing rules that were supposed to be defunct over a decade ago. Either that or sprout some ‘guidance’ material in the hope that someone will consider it authoritative.
In my first post in this thread, I quoted these words from the CASA website:
In the interim, it is necessary to clarify and regularise the policy.
That’s now been changed to:
Pending implementation of Part 91, it is necessary to clarify and regularise the policy in current law.
Now let’s think about the implications of that (in addition to just the implications of changes being made to the CASA website, without any amendment list or other note to indicate that anything changed).
In July 2012 CASA said:
CASA will have the remaining new parts of the Civil Aviation Safety Regulations made as law shortly, bringing an effective end to the regulatory reform program.
If the remaining new parts of CASRs were indeed going to be made as law “shortly” after July 2012, why would it be necessary, 6 months later, to start a new project that is itself likely to take months, to implement an ‘interim’ solution to a problem that will supposedly be fixed by new Part 91?
The answer: CASA
won’t have the remaining new parts of the CASRs made as law “shortly”.
And just to remind everyone about the reliability of CASA’s commitments to regulatory reform timelines, here’s what CASA said on 14 February 2005 – close enough to
eight years ago – in response to a Senator’s question as to when the reform program – which was
already a mess in 2005 - was going to end:
I would be hopeful that it would not be long after early 2006 that most of the draft rules are delivered to the minister.
