No you firstly commented on Airservices lack of service, and it's safety implications, and then conflated that with the Airport situation of requiring visitors to reception to jump through some hoops. The fact that the airport continues to enforce the rules forced on it by various governmental agencies has what relationship to the status of the airspace? They unfortunately don't have the option of "Oh we're a bit short staffed, so we're just going to leave the gates open for a while".
If you had asked why does CASA give ASA a free pass, yet everyone else in the industry has to abide by the rules irrespective, it would not have come across as just a rant against perceived GC pettiness.

In this regard Auditor-General Report No. 28 2021–22 Performance Audit makes interesting reading.

Gne

Or, more accurately, if you had asked why does CASA give ASA a free pass and ATSB give both a free pass...

Mutual protection racket.

We also have to ask what penalties does ASA suffer for not supplying what is a safety sensitive service. Shouldn't there be stiff fines to ensure it has 100% coverage, enough to ensure they employ and pay controllers enough even for unexpected sickness. As for a tower service reverting to CTAF not affecting safety, why is there an expensive tower in the first place? This was happening BEFORE covid, regular patches in controller coverage even at Sydney and Melbourne. To blame covid alone is completely bogus. It's an employment pay and conditions argument, pure and simple, ASA does not employ and retain enough controllers so they have holes in the system.

Correct. A monopoly provider being squeezed to provide the "service" as cheaply as possible (affordable safety) and a $$ return to the government (dividend). Airservices Australia - mmm, maybe Lipservices (to safety) Australia?

Retired a while now from Cairns ATC. We had a contingency plan for when either Tower &/or Approach service was not available. I know of 2 occasions when Tower was not available and the plan was put into action. NOTAM issued requiring pilots to phone for a briefing on procedures to follow - e.g. set course time, when to call Approach for clearance etc. Pilots followed procedures well and all worked quite well, apart from longer delays than normal. We also did a post event washup (incl with industry) to ascertain what could be improved. I am sure Gold Coast ATC would have something similar in place.

Isn't the contingency plan for airspace without ATC the same everywhere? Isn't it called "G"?

Wouldn't all be under the same minister would they?

Not quite the same as during peak hours, that looks like curfew hours only.

Nope, in the case of the capital city CTRs the surrounding airspace is designated a Temporary Restricted Airspace.

Was still a pain and a joke.

So a failure to provide service is wrapped in nice shiny paper, and then we pretend there is still some form of service being provided.

No service, no pay. I'm sure the operators get a discount on the Terminal Nav charges...

I also literally said it was a rant against gold coast airport pettiness. Do you always start rage typing against a post before reading it in its entirety? Anyway it is a good sign a thread has run its course when it degenerates into pedants having a go at something which is pretty straight forward. No doubt if someone posted the sky was blue there would be 50 replies by pilots explaining why this may or may not be the case, how back in their day the sky was bluer, young pilots today don't know what blue is, and the CAR's and CAO's are very poorly written as to when the blue stops and the violet begins.

I didn't rage type anything. That's what rant typists do. I read your post in its entirety. It didn't make sense.

QF are going to struggle in the Pilbara then…

Is 'rage typing' and 'rant typing' actually a thing?

(Asking for several pprune friends)

It is now:}

I heard the opposite. They can't operate in TRA because of no insurance, but they will operate in G.