Oleo, I take your point. However there are Two things that do not help your case, both relate to the hope that a passing politician or journalist might read what has been written on some Pprune pages and decide to take the matter further.
1. The first is the habit of some pilots to revile both journalists for their aviation hyperbole ("the lazy journalists guide" etc.) and calling members of the travelling public "self loading freight" a derogatory term I detest. Both tend to form an impression that the pilot community is a bunch of self indulgent prima donnas, leading to the false conclusion that compliants by them about CASA may have no basis in fact.
2. The tendency to use acronyms without explaining them and not bothering to put the story into words others can understand.
The whole point of the story is that the ATSB was set up in the first place as an independent body, as are similar institutions all over the developed world, to paraphrase Mr. Dolan: because it is vital to the safety of the travelling public all over the world that any safety information must not be suppressed for fear of the consequences,"
However CASA and the ATSB established a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that now completely subverts the intent of not only Australias laws on the matter but Australias intenational obligations to the International Civil Aviation Organisation which is a big deal because non compliance prejudices the availability of international travel services to the Australian public.
The ATSB now transmits information to CASA that facilitates prosecution or administrative punishment against individual pilots and allegedly perverts its reports to make them supportive of CASAs preferred outcomes. This situation now guarantees that pilots will think twice before reporting anything to the ATSB at all - suppressing safety information.
I dare say AirServices Australia (AsA), the air traffic control provider, has an MOU that facilitates similar actions by CASA. Which is one reason why I'm fitting data logging equipment to my aircraft.
In my opinion. both CASA and ATSB have "drunk the Kool Aid" (referring to the forced suicide of the Jones cult) - meaning that they have perverted their operations in a manner that reduces the possibility of an adverse Aviation event being discovered and requiring the Minister to take either criticism or action, while at the same time assuming absolute responsibility for one should it occur.
To put that another way, by embarking on MOUs CASA ATSB and AsA have willingly entrapped themselves in "the double bind problem" at the invitation of the Minister who will no doubt wreak terrible justice on them after there is an accident and their failings are revealed and I have some sympathy for their hardworking and diligent staff for this reason..
The usual personal calculation made by people requested to enter this type of double bind is to take the pay and responsibility and hope like hell nothing happens during the term of their contract. This is what I was invited to do by Esso many years ago and I quit as a result. What Esso some years later did to its poor employees, some of who died in its Longford Gas Plant Explosion, validated my decision.
My guess would also be that a new Government would have no stomach for reform whatsoever.
That is the guts of the story that needs to be told in my opinion and I wish the good Senators luck.
Last edited by Sunfish; 31st Mar 2013 at 21:00.