Lead Balloon, as an aviation professional I found the NGA ATSB report and CASA's response to be amatuer hour stuff. Any risk assessment of the operation should have raised alarm bells and led to mitigation strategies by the operator well before any accident occurred. No amount of rule making by office dwellers remote from the operation would have helped, however CASA should have been aware that the safety system was deficient well before the accident and acted.
I think we can agree that aviation regulation in this country has been poorly handled and major change is needed in the way regulations are conceived and written. Trying to read and interpret current regulations is a nightmare, they seem to be written in such a way as to support prosecution of legal cases rather than supporting sound safety decisions by operators. I still believe a good place to start is articulating what you are setting out to achieve, and then following through with changes that meet the aim.