It would have been appropriate for air sickness bags to have been handed out to the relatives of those killed in the Lockhart River air crash when Queensland coroner Michael Barnes reported his finding on the disaster on Friday afternoon.

Barnes blamed the deaths of 13 passengers and both pilots on 7 May 2005 on the actions of the senior pilot Brett Hotchin and the defunct regional carrier Transair.

An astonishing revelation really. Just as the Australian Transport Safety Bureau made clinically clear in its ferocious report into the accident published in April.

Also astonishing is the finding that CASA could not have prevented the crash.

If it couldn’t prevent even a tin pot airline serving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities from crashing, why is CASA being trusted with the safety regulation of big Australian airlines?

Can someone, perhaps the Minister of Transport Mark Vaile, discover at what threshold of air transport activity CASA becomes effective?

Before the Coroner sat, CASA had admitted knowing that Transair was deficient in key operational matters. It knew that pilot Brett Hotchins was dangerous.

Yet it told the public nothing about what it knew, knowledge that might have informed decisions about whether to fly on its services. Its oversight of its operations was so ineffective it let Transair masquerade as a safe airline and fly 13 unsuspecting passengers to their deaths.

What else isn’t CASA telling us? How many dead people will it take for the government to address the core issues of culture and competency and resources in air transport safety regulation for all Australians, black, white, outback, city, in large jets or small turbo-props?

Surely Ian Harvey QC, the counsel assisting the coroner must have tried his utmost to focus the inquest on issues that go to the core of public safety in the air?

After all, he came to the inquiry with impeccable credentials in terms of insights into aviation and CASA, having earned $475,436 from appearing for the safety regulator between July 1, 2002 and June 30, 2006.