More like $150,000 cap plus a $30,000 admin fee. Just the cost of that admin fee could get you 100 command hours. I'm guessing the cost of the pilot costume is on top of that.
Some providers aiming for the rich list will keep on fooling people that there is a "pilot shortage" and because that is what they want to hear, they sign up. It's the most expensive way of doing it, but the providers do very nicely until they suddenly go bust, leaving the students with nothing to show for it but a VET debt that the rest of us have to subsidise.
Then when they finally get qualified for double what it would have cost them if they'd worked and saved up for a few years, they try to white ant the industry and those same people who didn't fall for the sales pitch. White ants have always been a problem in this industry but the sense of entitlement that the massive government loans have given them seems to have made it worse. Clearly the Govt were also taken in by the "pilot shortage" rubbish or there should be an investigation into the vested interests.
The training provider made it's money from selling courses, not command time, so these people often only have the bare minimum of 70 hours. That's going to make it pretty tough to find work.
In my experience success in the industry is like the tortoise and the hare. Most of the ones like the OP who have contemptuously tried to stamp on people's heads on the way up have fallen by the wayside. Former students of mine who have got to the top of their game have all been self funded. Nothing like a few years of underground FIFO prior to starting the course to prove commitment.
gulliBell, thanks, I now have an image of someone turning up at the farm complete with sparkling white shirt, gold bars, raybans and whizz wheel in pocket. I wonder if they would pick fruit for nothing just to get ahead? Knowing some of the hard core fruit pickers out there I think they would last just a few seconds.