[thorn bird]

Gobbles one little thing that Wingnut said that started the famous Kharon boatman's itch????

If I heard it right, am I right in interpreting his words that the decline in pilot numbers
and certified GA activity is because of a mass exodus to RA?

Is this an admission that over regulation by CAsA, with the attendant massive increases in compliance costs,
is the reason for the incredible decline on the certified side of the GA industry?

RA aircraft are not "Certified" can be home built and self maintained.
I'm not suggesting that they are unsafe, that is dependant on those that fly them and maintain them, but certainly
the consensus has always been that "Certified" meant safer.

Australia's RA oversight is somewhat unique to Australia, I am not aware of any other regulator in the world abrogating responsibility for oversight as Australia does.

Does this not fly in the face of CAsA's mandate that safety is their primary directive and to hell with the cost, even if those costs destroy the very industry those costs are applied to?

The other thing that stood out to me was Wingnut's very neat side step of the ADSB issue.

In very neat Mandarin speak he put industry in it's place.

The question he failed to answer, which was not asked, was, "Why" Given Australia's traffic density was it essential that Australia needed to be "the first in the world"?

There are many who would suggest that it was mandated to save ASA the cost of replacing ground radars, thus improving their directors KPI's and therefore their bonuses. As it turned out they still had to replace the radars.
Surely not? our independent government enterprises would never stoop so low.
Then again, perhaps if the same level of oversight was applied to them as they apply to industry there's no telling what sweet little deals would turn up.
I am told that the huge costs of providing ADSB by 2018 will become largely redundant with new technology in the pipeline. If that becomes reality, Australia's desperate rush to be "first in the world" will look like a massive miscalculation at the expense of the taxpayer and the industry.

I really do wonder therefore what on earth the "Onesky" project will end up costing.