TM, your attitude honestly says a lot to me and others about yourself. Irrespective of your own path into Aviation Mick Stuped has clearly been around for a very long time and so have the Pilots he has kept in contact with and that by itself deserves a bit less of an attitude from yourself. When experienced Pilots (Not just Experienced in GA but obviously high time Captains of Jets) are commenting on the Quality of Cadets perhaps you should listen instead of brushing it off simply because you feel that you're more than qualified and therefore everyone else must be as well. Perhaps instead of doing the same basic brand of bashing you're accusing them of you could simply relay your own experiences instead?
Both routes produce both good and bad Pilots for various reasons, after several hundred hours I don't doubt that a Cadet and someone who came up through GA will be indistinguishable all other things being equal but at the beginning would you rather a GA Pilot who has been through stressful situations in a Cockpit sitting next to you helping you deal with it or a raw cadet for whom this might be the first real situation outside of a Sim that they're dealing with?
Personally I think one of the biggest problems with the current generation (Including myself) are the way that Sims are viewed, yes they're stressful for anyone but I believe we view it as more of a game, it's not a life or death situation so how you react there can be extremely different to how you could react once you're sitting upfront and the realisation hits you that there's now really a couple hundred tons of real metal, fuel and flesh behind you and that makes the Cadet at the initial stages more of an unknown quantity IMHO."
Getting back on topic though, I really do feel like this is a failing on the part of CASA for not doing enough to fully foster Australia's' potential as a Training ground that can provide some of the worlds best training, not just for bare CPL but for larger Type Ratings and everything else inbetween. I often seen FAA and EASA Courses that advertise CPL and then a Type Rating as well, but I can't think of a single training organisation in Australia that boasts the same and from what I've heard and been told cost is one of the biggest problems, it's simply not worth their effort which means when the Airlines go looking for Pilots with Type Ratings as a minimum of course they're not finding Australian Pilots, they're finding European and American ones who did it with their initial training.