An ATSB report does not "go through the lawyers" before it is released. They are peer reviewed by other investigators and of course the Commissioner has final approval. They are not like other government reports. The reputation of the ATSB was severely tarnished by the first report so I don't think that it will be more of the same and I would suggest that the role of CASA and its oversight of PelAir will be given more scrutiny. I would also suggest that is the reason for this statement
a number of requests for extensions to the draft comment period were received from several parties.
I'm not sure what new safety lessons are to be drawn from this episode as the Mildura incident confirmed that the BoM forecasts are not to be trusted. Mildura also demonstrated that when you are presented with the worst case scenario not of your making then putting it on the hard stuff is still a better option.