Sunfish, certainly ATSB reports will be written IAW the Style Manual and whatever guidelines for government publications are applicable, but they do not get sent to another government agency or legal team for vetting. The process I described is the process used. The IIC is responsible for the final report that ultimately the Commissioner approves. With the original Norfolk report we agree that there was an agenda but that was coming from within the ATSB and its disastrous MoU with CASA. In that instance the investigator's who were in management positions were definitely to blame, the IIC was caught in the middle. I am aware of the other threads and have contributed to them. IMHO a lot of what comes across as criticism of the content and style of the reports tends to have an established bias applied. Time will tell but I think the Norfolk report 2.0 will be very different.
