Early on in the piece VoR said:
What differences, exactly, are there between the application of Class E procedures in the United States, Europe, and Australia?
More recently VoR suggests that Class E procedures are misapplied in Australia and that this may be the cause of our problems.
Unfortunately, VoR, you are wrong in this instance. The fact that US controllers routinely do
not apply Class E procedures "by the book" is confirmed in independent reports by both Captain Robin Beville-Anderson and Airservices Australia from a 'fact finding' tour of a number of US ATC facilities in, I think, 2002. The Beville-Anderson report is available through the AFAP but I don't know whether the Airservices report has been published.
Both of these reports confirm that higher levels of service than required by the airspace classification are routinely provided by US controllers. The reasons for this are not identified, but one might speculate.
As to Class E airspace being loved the world over - well, like everything, it has its place. The Frogs, for example, have recently come to the conclusion that it maybe isn't such a good idea to be punching RPT aircraft into airspaces where all VFR traffic isn't known after they had two mid-air collisions in the space of six months between IFR RPT aircraft and VFR aircraft.
Oh yeah, VoR, the mandatory transponder requirements in Class E were first mooted during the AMATS project in 1988. The Mother of all Airspace Debacles since.