[Sandy Reith]

Dear Taaaf,

While your heart and recommendations are in the right place, your requests are mild, to say the least. To ask  for yet another 'task force' to look at amendments and exemptions will have the inhabitants of fortress CASA gleefully preparing more meetings in cooler parts of Australia this summer moving to northern parts for winter seminars. They will book their usual salubrious accommodations;  all the while 'user pays' and the Part 61 steamroller will kill off more hundreds of GA jobs.

The only hope for GA is action. These demands to be met before any cooperation:-

1. Suspend and replace Part 61 with simple rules immediately (you say propose urgent amendments, that will take years).
2. Take immediate steps to repeal criminal sanctions on the majority of the rules, and remove the strict liability provisions.
3. Allow individual instructors to teach, as in USA, without our super expensive AOC system.
4. Reduce the Private Pilot medical to the fitness level to drive a car, like US legislation and good enough for RAAus good enough for the rest of us. There is no safety case for AVMED examinations or to micro manage our health.
5. Everywhere in the regs substitute "rights" where now it says "privileges". We need to progress from the patronising medieval notion that government confers legitimacy to any activity only if allowed by the elite. Is it a privilege to drive your car, tractor or bicycle?

It should be made crystal clear that no amount of talking, engaging, being available, or discussions is acceptable before some action.

Action is demanded now and realise that CASA and Mr. Skidmore have given us nothing except more grief and we do not accept platitudes like "that was the previous administrators" or we are working on "cultural change". Working on change? Don't we pay these people to do as asked and what is good for Australia? No more pussy footing.

CAA (before name change) wrote to me in April 1989....."CAA..objectives...more business-like procedures in its regulation of the industry, with a view to reducing requirements, and their associated costs, to a minimum."

That lie is still standing twenty-six years later with no apology forthcoming. There's no "engaging" and no quarter given unless and until CASA accedes to our reasonable demands, and that's just the start.