I have a sneaking suspicion that Mrdak has effectively refused to allow the Minister to act, and Truss can't and won't act on his own. To put that another way, the Ministers hands are tied.
I also suspect that the candidates on the short list, having done their due diligence on the current state of affairs, have declined the offer of the position.
Anyone with substantial business experience can read between the lines of the review, it's published submissions and the Senate Estimates minutes and reach a conclusion about what must be done. Then of course the existence of unpublished submissions, the unpublished report into the ATSB and the Senates threats regarding parliamentary privilege and retribution by the regulator would not have gone unnoticed and are enough for anyone who has ever held a senior executive position to conclude that there are Augean stables to be cleaned.
When cleaning Augean stables, the first rule is that you require:
(1) The tools for the job.
(2) An unfettered ability to act as you see fit.
(3) Sufficient resources.
(4) And finally, the unbending support of your superiors.
Otherwise, don't even begin to try - speaking from personal and bitter experience.
I don't believe items (1) through (4) are available. I don't believe the Government or Department will even admit that there is an Augean stable, or if they do, that it contains more than a few broom strokes of possum poo in it.
I believe that the iron ring is entrenched in very well defended positions within CASA and that they will fight to the death. I believe that the same group have sufficiently threatened, and scared the Department, the Minister and the Government to the point where they will avoid bureaucratic bloodshed ( as opposed to passenger blood) at all costs.
The result is that the terms of reference for the appointment of the new Director are highly constrained and support for drastic action by her is not available from either the Department or the Government.
As an aside, if I were the iron ring, I would be pushing for one of the recommendations to be implemented immediately - the conversion of CASA staff to public servant status which would give them the full protections of the Public Service Act and the associated plethora of natural justice and procedural fairness provisions surrounding their removal from office.
My thoughts are therefore that the next Director Of Air Safety is going to be another narcissistic bully or some dumb idiot whose ambition exceeds their talents. No sane adult is going to try to clean up this mess.
To put that another way, don't hold your breath waiting for another night of the long knives when justice is meted out to evildoers, said evildoers will retire very nicely to the South Coast when they feel like it.