PS
I'm intrigued to find out what everyone believes these Boards can do that results in so much faith being put in a Board as part of the solution?
In regulatory regimes like aviation safety regulation, the exercise of delegated powers is determined by the relevant criteria in the legislation and the general law of administrative decision-making. The Board can’t override or change any of that. The Board may make or endorse policies that are relevant to and within the narrow scope permitted by the legislation, but these are generally very broad statements of strategic principle – dare I say motherhood? CASA has an ample supply of warm and fuzzy policies.
My view is that the only practical thing a competent CASA Board could have done is prevented the creation and growth of the Frankenstein that is the regulatory reform program. But the far better way to have achieved that outcome was to not have given CASA the job in the first place.
You’ve seen the experiment right before your eyes: CASA with a Board and CASA without a Board. What difference did it make? One of those Boards had Dick Smith and Bruce Byron on it (among other people with business and aviation expertise). What difference did it make?
Board or not, CASA’s functions and powers must be constrained to a very narrow and simple regulatory role (which does not include managing the regulatory reform process), and the senior executives of the organisation must be qualified and experienced in managing regulatory organisations.