Nothing to do with "bluff" from CASA, OA. Ministers haven't been "slaves" to CASA, Frank.
The stultifying mediocrities that have presumed the title "government" over the last couple of decades have been happy to abdicate their responsibilities to CASA. A perfectly rational decision for political parties whose primary aim is to attain and retain power.
The logic of the coalition and labor is unassailable. They know that gormless punters are going to vote for tweedle dumb or tweedle dumber, so there's no point in taking on responsibility for aviation regulation for no political gain. If the electorate is going to vote for one or the other anyway, both win in their turn. Why care about angry people in the GA sector?
Has anyone seen
any Senator of
any government in recent history actually
cast a vote to give effect to some strong opinion expressed during a Senate inquiry relating to aviation?
Yesterday a Coalition Senator asked the Coalition Attorney-General why the Coalition Senator could not be shown the confidential material in the report of the recent building industry Royal Commission, but cross-bench Senators could be. The answer from the Coalition Attorney-General to the Coalition Senator was, in summary and implicitly, that the Coalition Senator is a member of the Coalition and will therefore STFU and do what he's told.
Parliamentary scrutiny and democracy in action.
In the public interest of course.
However, the greatest awe must in my view be reserved for those who've sensed and taken advantage of the need to fill the vacuum, and who've stepped up and run CASA on behalf of the government for the last couple of decades without successive DASs or industry realising. The same people who are always ready and volunteering to ensure that governments are insulated from responsibility, whether it's a tweedle dumb government or a dweedle dumber government, and to save the public from those scarily awful risks to aviation safety.
Always there to help a new DAS by articulating a great idea that signals a new dawn for aviation safety.
It's as if they've are able to read the DAS's mind, and the DAS has been thinking: "I have NFI how to run a Commonwealth statutory authority or regulatory reform program, but I have to pretend I do."
(Although it is interesting to see that the reality is finally dawning on some. Some punters are finally realising that there are two constants through nearly a couple of decades of recent aviation regulation - genuine geniuses who are held accountable for almost nothing but responsible for almost everything.)