Sunfish and others I understand your views but I think they are misplaced. The targeted campaign strategy has been tried before and has failed, getting the attention of non aligned politicians has been tried and while initially encouraging has produced no long term results that have produced the change that was required to salvage any sort of future for the industry. The three major players (Qantas/Ansett/RAAF, then Qantas/Virgin/RAAF) in the business have succeeded in getting the ears and action from various ministers in a way that suited their interests but did nothing meaningful to address the issues and role of aviation in Australia other than passenger transport and defence. There was a period after world war two when efforts were made to build upon the resources and skills and to develop industry and aviation technology but they foundered under the weight of other economic issues, namely capital controls and bureaucratic management of the left overs of the so called aerospace sector. We built world class facilities that could have allowed Australia a major role in space exploration and rocketry but let them fall into disuse and disappear. Time after time consortiums have attempted to get political interest in international class freight hubs, satellite and space vehicle launch facilities and manufacturing, like fast rail it remains a dream that will now be never realised. The last airframe manufacturer of any potential we had was sold to the Indians after years of unwarranted assault and interference from CASA.
The standard political response of calling for a Commission of Inquiry or Royal Commission and then ignoring the report is standard practice in Australian public life. They even did it to Kingsford Smith back in the 1930's with a Royal Commission into the Coffee Royal misadventure. And the RAAF has been an administrative clusterf&*^% since before WWII, a real look at the standard political ineptitude and defence administration that characterised the RAAF during WW2, which resulted in the Morotai mutiny and sundry other outbreaks of so called disobedience from senior serving officers in the face of ineptitude reveals only that aviation has happened despite politicians and government not because of it. Only recently we have senior officers telling the politicians that the decision to invest in the F35 is a major mistake but the RAAF will get it anyway and it will be useless (But that is a whole other topic of its own).
I am not interested in CASA bashing per se and while it would be easy to pick the organisation to pieces and to reflect upon the damage it has wrought upon individuals, their livelihoods and reputations, it does not change the basic fact that the very people who are responsible for the mess and the decline of the aviation industry will not take responsibility, lack conviction and therefore demonstrate significant shortcomings in both civic responsibility and social leadership. In short, we are and have been governed for a long long time by people who are ignorant fools and cowards. How else would you arrive at a situation where the national carrier, gets rid of local employment and engages in corporate tax avoidance using offshore tax shelters (not my views but the considered views of one the worlds leading tax avoidance experts and former senior ATO official) so if they don't notice or care about that then off course they will not care a fig about the rest of the industry either.
That is why nothing will change and things will only get worse and now that even Qantas has been successful in tax avoidance strategies by offshoring its maintenance we know that even the large corporate players left have no interest in the future of the industry as far as Australia is concerned, it is just a market that adopts technology, uses that technology and will walk away from that industry the moment it suits. Alas it seems that is the way it has always been and always will. It could have different but will not be and so it is best to let it wither and die in peace. You can be creative flogging a dead horse but it is still a dead horse. Best get on with something else less injurious to one's mental health and bank balance.