Leadsled, a couple of observations...
James Kimpton was an Ansett
PR/lobbyist, not a lawyer I think. I remember him puffing and blowing occasionally around that place.
The "Iron ring" of which you speak has the same charactersitics, in my opinion, as that narcissist Kevin Rudd. It is quite obvious that Kevin cares not whether the Labor party is in government or not as long as he runs it. Damage to the party, Government or country matters not as far as he is concerned. He just wants to get his hand back on the steering wheel. Likewise the CASA "iron ring" I suspect - they don't give a rats about the industry as long as they are in charge of whats left of it.
PM & C acts as a counterweight to the mandarins of the Public service and deal with the issues of how to organise Government itself and how to balance the competing interests of the various departments. Without such a creature, the Cabinet and PM would be totally reliant on the mandarins for advice, and have no intellectual horsepower available to look at for example, the competing interests of treasury and finance departments and a raft of other such catfights.
In my opinion, If PM & C threw a spanner in the works of a previous reorganisation of CASA, it was because they were told to, probably for the reason you mention. My limited experience of them was that they are the creme de la creme. Very bright, dedicated, hard working, incorruptible and patriotic people. They probably have bigger fish to fry than CASA. If they wanted to, the most junior of them could write the bills and enabling legislation to break up CASA and restore ATSB integrity over a weekend.
To put that another way, if the PM wills it, CASA and ATSB can be very speedily fixed and it would be very stupid of CASA management to think that appeals to arcane technical arguments is going to save them. However, if the political jdgement is that it is not opportune to do so, then it won't happen.
Now for "The Vision Thing" I often have to suffer through the infliction of cable television on me. However occasionally I see a TV show called "The Aviators" as well as a program about bush flying in Alaska. You get to watch ordinary people using aircraft as an everyday tool or recreation. You see bustling airports, airstrips and camping grounds in national parks, even (get this!) restaurants at GA airstrips! Compare this with the windswept graveyards that typify Australian regional airports and its pretty obvious what CASA has cost the Australian economy in jobs and GDP.
As for the current Director, I'm sorry to say that his response to criticism (in response to the senate, and in the latest CASA report as well as the AMROBA meeting) just confirm we have a problem. Having said that, I don't know of anyone in Melbourne who has had a bad experience with CASA down here, quite the reverse it seems.