Kharon
Funny thing is that over a quiet Latte yesterday morning we were discussing the same things.
I got my new medical 2 days ago. It was submitted on Dec 10. There were no problems, there has been no explanation about why it has taken so long. But it took me numerous phonecalls and emails to get it. Each time I spoke with pleasant people who apologised and made a new promise to mail it. Each time the promise was broken. The next phonecall would be pleasant to a nice person who had not the faintest scrap of concern that a colleague had not honoured an undertaking. Nor was there the slightest hint of concern that not having a class 1 medical might be an inconvenience to a CPL.
I don't think legislation has much to do with people honouring commitments. The trouble is that there is a culture in CASA that pilots just don't matter.
It didn't used to be like this. I think its 99% about the people & culture and people & culture problems are 99% about the guys at the top.
One of my Latte companions yesterday says he possesses a power-point presentation from a recent DAME conference. It was delivered by someone in CASA and the subject material was why CASA doesn't accept the opinions of medical specialists. Doesn't that capture the issue right there? Non medical personnel or (at best) non practising medically trained personnel get to exercise discretion over highly trained specialist practitioners.
Some years ago I had the misfortune to be the first Australian pilot put on a particular drug. In the US this drug is listed in the FAA handbook as safe with no known side effects and not requiring FAA notification. In Australia this wasn't good enough for CASA. Nor was the opinion of my specialist (a world leader who regularly presents at overseas conferences). It wasn't until my specialist called in a favour from a colleague at the Mayo clinic that CASA became satisfied.
These problems don't require legislation to fix them. It just requires people with integrity and backbone in the upper levels of CASA.