Isn't all this just a bit premature what with the looming advent of the Office of Airspace Management about to kick off.
Define premature. The minister has indicated what the gummint policy is, but ASA still has its own CEO and Board, and their own policies. Because the (previous) minister has indicated his office might pick up the reins sometime next near (at the current rate this will be in 6 ministers time) the current CEO will be working overtime to implement stuff so his CV looks good for his next gig the year after, (in about 12 ministers time). Whether any of it works, or is cost effective, or will be reversed by ministerial rein twitching is irrelevant, coz he will be working somewhere else when we find out.
As to airspace change, if it is imposed by a committee addicted to Ozemite we will just have to deal with it, and flyers will pay the bills.
what are the practical applications to the various types of traffic as understood by the ATCOs?
At the moment, if you fly from ML/SY/ML you fly through two enroute functional groups. These groups have their own co-rated ATC, their own line managers, sit in different aisles and have only a cursory knowledge of what the others do, and how their decisions affect the other group. The groups cover all levels, so the same two groups that process the ML/SY track process the AY/SY as well.
What is proposed would combine the sectors that cover the ML/SY/ML jet traffic into a single group under a single manager, in the same aisle as ML TMA, shoving the regional traffic underneath to another group. If a sector within that group requires a change of some sort it can be implemented within a single group rather than negotiated. Then do the same for AD/ML/AD and AD/SY/AD. After that somebody will notice that some of these tracks cross, the earth is not flat, and we will go back to stopping sector boundaries at state borders...
The guts:
ECS: Optimised everything for the customers that pay the bills, RPT. Everybody else ****-off.
RO: Praying for low level E airspace so somebody won't notice that Flight Service has been reintroduced and make them all unemployed. Night shifts spent talking to nobody in vast, aeroplane-free, conked sector groups. "Is that guy departing traffic for me?" "No, he's in Mildura, you're in Merimbula..."
UP: Flextracks everywhere & dynamic sectorisation. Optimised everything for the customers that pay the bills, RPT. Everybody else ****-off. Every night a bewildering brain-fest.