"And I now hear a person who could do a lot to reduce costs has been rejected by the CASA Chairman and Board for consideration for the top job.
Why are they doing this?"
It's really quite simple Dick.
Self Interest.
There is a cadre of people in the top echelon of CAsA known as the "Iron Ring" who have been there for years, they are the ones who have lead Australian aviation to the bottom.
They know full well that to employ someone like Mike Smith, a proven reformer, would jeopardise their position at the trough. They are also aware that with their level of incompetence they'd be unlikely to find employment anywhere else.
From what people who have experienced the CAsA cesspit and left tell me, they left because they were competent people and recognised their talents would never be utilised. I'm told that there are rafts of people within CAsA who are only there because its the only place where they can study for their degrees, or masters and receive a massive salary in the process. Its no wonder it takes months, even years, to obtain make work approvals when half the staff are working on their own self interests rather than the job they are paid to do.
I know one company trying to get an aircraft on their AOC, got charged 16 hours for an FOI to check that a manufacturer supplied, FAA approved QRH, exactly matched the content of the manufacturers, FAA approved flight manual.
It is self interest and a reflection of the incompetence in the top echelon of CAsA that has produced the folly of our regulatory debacle, half a billion dollars of taxpayer dollars fritted away and more in the pipeline, to achieve absolutely nothing except a massive cost burden that has brought a whole industry to its knees.
Australia is just not being smart like the Kiwi's. Self interest right across the public service in Australia from energy policy, aviation,to almost every corner of industry is driving the mind boggling mountain of red tape, strangling everything in its path.