Were they always this bad?
No, they were not. It appears that, these days, the writer is just not of the quality he was in the old days.
A few examples from that report linked to by
MagnumPI:
Passing 12 NM (22 km) on approach to Mildura, the pilot made a broadcast to advise that they
were approaching the airport. The pilot reported that during the approach, the AWIS indicated that
the cloud base was varying between 1,000 ft and 3,000 ft. Therefore, the pilot decided to
approach Mildura overhead to observe the conditions.
Clunky and overly wordy. The words, "the pilot" appear far too often. The first sentence is entirely irrelevant. This entire passage could thus have been written more simply and concisely:
Approaching Mildura, and with the AWIS now indicated a cloud base varying between 1,000 ft and 3,000 ft, the decision was made to observe the conditions from overhead the aerodrome.
Note that this simpler form has avoided the dreadful "the pilot" altogether.
Yes, the ATSB are politically correct too, and will go to whatever lengths it takes to avoid divulging genders, but this attitude has been taken to ridiculous lengths in this report. The phrase "the pilot" appears 31 times in this short report. The gender-neutral "they" also appears an excessive number of times, and on many of these occasions, the usage is wrong. Wrong because "they" means "more than one".
Examples:
The pilot reported that the aircraft was parked with the left wing low at the fuel point and when they
refuelled the fuel tanks in the wings, so they might have stopped before the tanks were full.
It is most likely that this refuelling was done by a single person, which means that "they" cannot be used.
On approach,
they noticed there were powerlines on both sides of the road and changed their landing site to a
nearby paddock.
We know that at this stage of proceedings, the pilot was the only occupant, so again, "they" cannot be used. In their zeal to be politically correct, they are subverting the language!
A poorly written report. Makes one long for the Macarthur Job days. Now don't get me started on the
quality of their investigations.