The paradox is that a person capable of doing the DAS job correctly can never be chosen.
A person capable of doing the job correctly would realise that CASA is not competent to run, and has a conflict of interest in running, the regulatory reform program. That person would insist that the Minister and the Department did their job.
Given that the Minister and the Department decide who the DAS will be, they are always going to choose someone who's silly enough to pretend, or is so naive as to believe, that s/he is in control of, and therefore responsible for, something that CASA is not competent to do and cannot do.
The regulatory mess that Australia is in is nearly as much a straightjacket for the DAS as it is for the industry. The only partly-effective tools that the DAS has to change anything substantially are:
(1) the exemption making power, and
(2) the ability to influence the policy that drives new rules.
However, here's the problem: To use those tools effectively, you have to understand the detail and effect of the entirety of the current regulatory Frankenstein. CA Act, 1988 regs, 1998 regs, building regs, fees regs, CAOs, MOSs, exemptions, Chicago Convention, Carriers' liability legislation, Air Services Act and regs, Transport Safety Investigation Act and regs ....
I don't think there's anyone on the planet, other than perhaps JA, who understands the entirety and detail of the current regulatory Frankenstein. An ex-RAAF pilot might understand the flight crew licensing CAO and the rules of the air, and that's about it.
This means that the DAS can have all of the best intentions, but s/he has no choice but to hope that others have the knowledge, competence and authority to implement all the high-sounding ideas about simplification and risk-based and evidence-based regulation and red tape reduction and responsiveness etc etc. The fact is that those around him/her in CASA do not have the collective knowledge, competence and authority to do much of anything other than create more complexity. Further, they have a personal interest in creating more complexity. It justifies their existence.
And before anyone suggests that (2) is the solution, I note that a one sentence good idea at DAS level becomes a 10 page set of instructions a couple of levels down from the DAS, then becomes 100 pages of draft regulations and offences out of the Office of Parliamentary Counsel, which generates a dozen unintended consequences requiring 100 pages of further instructions...
20 years of that kind of simplification gets you exactly where Australia is today.
All of that said, my opinion is that the CVD issue was a test that Mr Skidmore failed.
Miserably.
It was in his power to decide a valid 'third level test' instead of a test that even the inventors and "experts" conceded does not simulate an operational situation. An objective assessment of the evidence and risks would have justified that decision.
A two sentence memo with the DAS's signature would have done it.
Instead, he listened to the whispering scaremongers.