[Peetwo]

EWH catching up (sort of) -   

Via this week's LMH: http://www.australianflying.com.au/the-l...te%20Hitch

...The bedrock seems unsteady; imperceptibly shifting. No earthquake Victoria-style, but a tremor that hints that our world could be changing shape. Cracks are appearing in walls. The epicentre appears to be Canberra, where a shift in attitudes towards general aviation are becoming apparent. Although not monumental, GA advocates are telling me that there is "a real appetite for reform" within the Department of Infrastructure and Transport, backed up by some whitehats within CASA tired of the hard-nosed bureaucrats who are embedded in an historical culture of inertia like Easter Island statues. This week the department announced that they wouldn't be increasing the no-approval investment threshold at federally-leased airports despite the demands of leaseholders. In the past, a threshold increase would probably have been rubber-stamped through like most other deviations from the original lease agreements have been. And there are other signs, many of which have to stay under wraps until they have been nurtured enough to present to the world. The evidence is not so much in what is being said, but rather who it is that is saying it. Some of general aviation's most pessimistic trumpets are sounding more optimistic, which I will admit is a fanfare that I never expected to hear. Some attribute the shift to the new minister Barnaby Joyce; others to new CASA DAS Pip Spence. There are quite a few impressed with the appointment of former CASA board member Anita Taylor as the minister's aviation advisor. People who are singing praises now would have been throwing brickbats two years ago, and that's a change in itself...

MTF...P2