Folks,
What has died, thanks to CASA and the ASIC card, is "fly yourself" tours by foreign pilots and their families, particularly those with a flying tour guide and a gaggle of aircraft.
It is not so much the expense of the bureaucratic bull****, but the almost totally impenetrable nature of the "process", and the degree to which CASA has made it an almost impossible obstacle course, both in time and process, to validate a foreign pilot license. With six/nine months or more pre-arrival in Australia preparations, it can still take three/four weeks before you can actually go fly.
It is just so much easier for a Yank, Canadian or any brand of European to say: "Sod Australia, I'll go for a fly around South Africa/NZ/almost anywhere else outside a war zone".
Tootle pip!!
PS: Mind you, "the industry" is not entirely without fault, the attempted rip-offs with so called "CASA mandatory" validation flight tests taking up to 10 hours including a 5 hour cross country, around AUD$4000.00, leave a very bad taste. and bad news travels with the speed of light (or the speed of twitter).