You make some common (and reasonable) assumptions, but which I consider erroneous: that people with experience in the subject matter being regulated are therefore necessarily qualified to be competent and expert regulators; that people who have managed any big organisation are therefore necessarily qualified to be competent and expert managers in regulators.
I thought my analogy was a valid one. The professors assume they know what they are doing, because they assume they have the necessary smarts and the skills to find out everything that needs to be done. The aviators assume they know what the regulator is supposed to do, because they understand the subject matter being regulated. Both assumptions are invalid.
(I recall one Professor who wrote a breathless article on the dangers of SIMOPS. He opined that "scarcely a more dangerous system could be devised". When I walked him through what SODROPS stood for, he nearly had a coronary. The point is he knew he was right, but he was wrong. Many in the aviation industry know what the regulator should do, but they, too, are wrong.
It seems to me that one of the essential skills of the head of a regulatory authority is to manage the substantial risks that arise from employing people with experience in the subject matter being regulated. Experts almost invariably labour under the misconception that their job, having joined a regulator, is to implement their pet projects and impose, on the world at large, their opinions about the subject matter being regulated. (Sound vaguely familiar?)
The government keeps appointing CASA CEOs who are experts in the subject matter CASA regulates, not expert regulators. How, then, does Mr Skidmore know that his job is not to implement his pet projects or impose, on the aviation community, his opinions about aviation regulation?
A real expert in regulation would recognise, immediately, the fundamental flaw in the regulatory reform program: the regulator is running it. This suits the people who actually understand what's going on and want to avoid responsibility for setting the standards that the regulator should just implement. Much better, for them, to instead leave the regulator to make sh*t up as it goes along and cop the flak for it.
But the roost is now creaking under the weight of the ever-increasing number of chickens coming home, in the form of a regulatory regime that is, by any objective measure, a sick, expensive joke and a hoax on the industry.
Names? Off the top of my head: Graham Peachey. Ron Catchpole. I could name a few more, but they'd all be perceived by large chunks of the aviation community to be unqualified because none of them is a skygod. And the people who actually understand what's going on in aviation regulation are very happy to keep appointing skygods and watch them draw the flak.