[Sandy Reith]

And who could forget the CASA evidence against an aircraft owner citing illegal maintenance by falsely claiming that there was a Wilga “left hand elevator” on the hangar floor? Unfortunately for those CASA inspectors the Wilga has a single tailplane. Lying hounds.

Or the exemplary operator with a fixed and rotary wing business at Harvey Bay who was squashed by CASA on the merest of wrongly based suspicion. Suspended his CP approvals right at the start of his busy tourist season and sat on his nominated replacements until the banks moved and repossessed his aircraft.

Highly skilled and long in business maintenance people have had like treatment, they just fold and are forgotten.

Time and again over the last 30 or 40 years this is the normal means of CASA repression and retribution.

There’s been few notable cases who’ve taken CASA to court and have won, but most don’t have the money to employ legal help.

And then there’s those with the wherewithal, like Clark Butson of Polar Aviation who took CASA to court and famously said he’d spent $one million to prove that CASA can do whatever it likes.

But what to expect from a monopoly corporate that operates without direct Ministerial responsibility and oversight? The Westminster principle of responsible government has been degraded by successive governments, the easy way out is to create these ‘independent’ statutory authorities. Of course they will keep their salaries low and altruistically administer solely for the benefit of Australia and do so most efficiently at the lowest possible cost.

No oversight or accountability back to the voter is needed, matter of fact why bother with Parliament and all that awful politics at all? Just have more independent IBACS, ATSBs, ASA, Ombudsman offices, CASAs, Voices, ATSICs etc.
Oops, that ATSIC with Geoff Clark as Chair didn’t work out very well and was disbanded in 2004.