Following on from the above comment by That Guy, I heard from a few sources that CASA Darwin's office even commended the Barrier operation and aircraft standards.
Apparently the Cairns FOI sent to Darwin for the audit was on a mission to find specific faults, faults which were not found, even when Darwin based AWI's were asked to come down and help. Heard from the engineers that CASA Darwin refused to fall into line with CASA Cairns mission and instead made it a point to write a positive internal report on Barrier - a report that never made it through to Cairns, Canberra or Sydney.
I got the distinct impression there are a few people in Darwin scratching their heads over the whole thing, especially the MIA report from CASA Darwin.