CS,
I think we're effectively going down that road now with the plan for reservist/ex-senior officers manning the FTS - understand it works in the RAF. The big argument for not civilianising was always that BFTS/2FTS were the places to 'grow' the SQN QFIs of the future. If you purely civilianise then how does that happen? BAES have been after it for years. The likes of Milskill are being considered at a high level to do it. Not sure how we could fully civilianise and yet still put QFIs into OCUs/SQNs. Partialy civilianise - why not?
Certainly the view in the SLT is that we should blur the line between reservists and PAF. If you leave the PAF but become a reservist then the RAAF have retained you. This makes quite a lot of sense - until we go to war of course!