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Old 20th Sep 2015, 23:57
  #244 (permalink)  
Lead Balloon
 
Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: Australia/India
Posts: 5,273
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AOTW

You either ignore or fail to understand that going down the court path is not the only path that involves pain and cost to the licence holder. You're labouring under the misconception that all the "flexibility" is good for the licence holder.
many more court cases, surely.
Nope.

To prove a case in court, CASA has to have admissible evidence and discharge a burden of proof.

Let's take a hypothetical pilot called Bohn O'Jien. He has a medical certificate. He's been flying as a CPL for a very long time. He has CVD.

Let's imagine that one day a hypothetical medico in CASA with a pet project decides Bohn's CVD creates an unacceptable risk to the safety of air navigation. The medico unilaterally decides to impose a condition on Bohn's medical certificate, the consequences of which are that his career is stopped in its tracks. Bohn then has to spend about $40,000 to get representation in the AAT (not to mention the time he has to spend and the stress he's put under) to get an objective umpire to work out that there is no substantial evidence to show Bohn's CVD creates an unacceptable risk to the safety of air navigation.

If, instead, CASA had been obliged to prove to a court that Bohn's CVD created an unacceptable risk to the safety of air navigation, before CASA imposed the career stopping condition, there would have been no condition imposed.

The matter would never have got to court.

That's because there is no substantial evidence to prove Bohn's CVD created an unacceptable risk to the safety of air navigation. The only material on which CASA's proposed condition was based was the opinion of mostly biased medicos and scaremongers with an interest in perpetuating the prejudice against pilots with CVD - people who make money out of micro-managing other people's lives by preying on the populace's fear of dying in an aircraft accident. Bohn's side, on the other hand, has admissible evidence based on things called "facts".

Most of CASA's administrative actions are based on material that would never be admissible in a court action.

BTW: Not all court matters are prosecutions.
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