I'm at a loss as to why SBAS hasn't been adopted in Australasia yet. Pretty well everywhere else in the civilised world has SBAS or is in the process of introducing SBAS.
You and me both mate. There have been a few key people in Australian Aviation pushing SBAS, but here is the problem. SBAS needs to be supported and implemented to support the Australian Transport and Services Industries, it is not solely for the aviation sector, though aviation will get a lot of benefit out of it. When all the other countries of the world were developing an argument for SBAS they had a complete Transport/Service industry solution. In Australia, at the time.....everybody was silent, except aviation. Guess what? the cost is too high for aviation to be able to fund it, and other transport sectors were not interested. In fact most other transport sectors went off and developed their own solutions
In recent times, driven mainly by the aviation sector, arguments have been made to the Dept of Transport and infrastructure...and they have started to listen. AMSA are on board, and the Kiwis are very interested as they can't fund it on their own either...so there is a will, and there is a closing window of opportunity to get an SBAS receiver on a satellite.......but it is closing rapidly and the cost is increasing.
What I think is the nail in the coffin is that I hear a rumour that Thales recently hosted an 'SBAS for Australia' information session and invited all interested parties to view the proposal. By all accounts the proposal was quite good....I hear Mr Mrdak was invited......good that he couldn't even be bothered to show up. If the Dept Secretary can't be bothered to show up, guess how much interest the gov't have in implementing SBAS?
Personally, I doubt SBAS will be happening anytime soon