Annex 19 - Panacea?
All this enthusiasm for Annex 19 as some form of panacea for the ills of Australian aviation is a little bemusing. My understanding of Annex 19 is that it is a collection of existing provisions, edited only for document continuity. As I further understand it, there will be no new provisions for a number of years.
Any existing shortfalls in Safety Management at a State level will continue as shortfalls when measured against Annex 19 (when it transitions from the current 'green' version to a fuly-fledged 'blue' version).
As for the Inquiry, I think 4dogs was saying much the same thing - don't let your enthusiasm for change outrun the realities. After all, Senate Inquiries are political processes, not executive processes.
As much as the good Senators turned over a few rocks and exposed quite a few lizards slithering away, think about the questions that were not asked or even the cross-examinations that did not occur. This is most often a time thing, since it seemed that every Senator is forever saying "I know we are short of time..." and the questions on notice just provide a deflective escape mechanism for the people who owe us a duty to tell us what is really going on.
The best option is a judicial inquiry, because they take as long as they think it needs to take. The unfortunate side of judicial inquiries is that they normally take some totally undesirable event to get going. Hopefully, we may be spared such an event.
We've just got to keep plugging away at the processes we've got - to make it politically unpalatable to do nothing! I just hope that a few pollies watched '60 Minutes' last night on AF447 - and reflected on our last "do nothing" inquiry.