Eyrie,
I agree.
When I use the word "freedom", I mean in the Oxford Dictionary sense, or the sense used in the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence.
Not the Australian meaning: The freedom to be regulated to a standstill by every Nanny, bureaucrat or otherwise, with attitude.
I was with Leroy Keith when he first had a flick through the 1996 SAAA AABA re-badge as Experimental Amateur Built. He just could not understand the mindset, that a group of people would want to opt for a whole bunch of restrictive regulations, which the then CASA had no intention of , and didn't, enact. We didn't have to persuade him to bin it, bin it he did.
I knew, as you probably did, what was really going one, but one undercurrent was really sad. And it is there to this day.
I had some long sessions with the then hierarchy of SAAA over the Experimental Cat., and that was the very strongly developed attitude that Australians could not be trusted with the freedoms US aviators enjoyed, that Australian aviators needed to be "regulated" for their own good.
OutCASAing CASA.
Time and again, in matters of airspace management, I hear the same thing. The US system will not work here, because of the culture, the culture of Australian pilots needing to be governed by detailed and prescriptive criminal law, because they can't be trusted to use common sense. Only a one-size-fits all straitjacket to fit the "culture" is permissible.
Very sad.
The yanks don't have nonsense like Part 132. There would be a civil war, if FAA tried, but they wouldn't try. Here, AWAL is hand in glove with CASA, and sod the interests of their members, who, presumably, cannot be trusted as their US counterparts are trusted.
Tootle pip!!