Carmody is very likely doomed from the very start because it is axiomatic that you cannot manage what you don't understand, and Carmody is not and never has been a pilot.
While Carmody obviously has superb public service management skills, which are not to be sneered at, that alone is not enough. The reason you need both skill sets is because at some point early in his tenure, Carmody will be called on to chair a meeting involving both legal, administrative and technical issues, at that time experts will argue their positions and Carmody will be called upon to adjudicate. With no first hand experience, Carmody will not be able to smell the BS, not a whiff, while everyone else around the table can. At that point he is finished. How do I know this? it happened to me as a group general manager of an IT organisation. There is nothing worse than the feeling that your subordinates are talking about subjects of which you have not the slightest knowledge.
Of course I am talking from the perspective of someone who believes "success" for the DAS means a thriving aviation industry in terms of jobs, investment and growth. I think Carmody's appointment indicates that the Government, Infrastructure Department and the Minister define "success" as preventing Aviation from being any embarrassment to the Federal Government or distraction from their other policy pursuits, hence I do not expect Carmody to actually reform anything at all, although if he is sufficiently artful, beneficial change may appear to have been achieved through a smoke and mirrors show.
To put that another way, Carmody is another "safe pair of hands" who can be trusted to maintain the status quo.
Last edited by Sunfish; 14th Jun 2017 at 03:02.