but cannot confirm, that a career spent in a rigid hierarchy does not make for free thinking and a light approach to regulation, but I'd love to be proved wrong.
I don't know about that now, but I for one, spent the full 18 years of my RAAF career in flying postings from the very early 1950's and enjoyed every minute. Every Commanding Officer I served under (all being former wartime pilots), showed no sign at all of being pedants. Indeed, most encouraged their staff to display initiative and come up with good ideas and then allowed them to implement those ideas. For this reason it was a culture shock to me when I left the RAAF with much regret and joined the Head Office of the then Department of Civil Aviation led at the top by its much vaunted Director General, Sir Donald Anderson.
On my first day in DCA it seemed to me over-endowed with office upon dreary office of Public Service shell-backs whose main ambition in life was to knock back any ideas from the aviation industry outside DCA; and also from those unfortunates inside the Department that dared make waves and suggest improvements. In 2015, I sense that attitude has not changed.
Perhaps it was inevitable that as formerly keen and dynamic RAAF pilots joining DCA as junior public servants rose over the years to higher seniority in the Public Service, they learned to cover their arses by becoming more cautious in decision making, lest some Assistant Secretary gnome on the Executive Floor mark him down as a trouble-maker and thus cause the perceived perpetrator to remain in the lower class of ranks for the rest of his chair-borne career. I again sense things haven't changed much in this regard.