Lefthanded Rock Thrower,
The only reason your eyes can glaze over when you hear the name NAS mentioned, is because you are ignorant of the full NAS features. Your statement is a bit like saying, when you hear the name Boeing 747 mentioned, your eyes glaze over because you have always flown DC3’s and DC6’s.
The US NAS as an airspace system is similar to the Boeing 747, that is, it has evolved into an incredibly safe system because of the enormous amount of money that is available, the very high density of traffic, the very bad weather conditions that can exist, the high mountain ranges and the wealthy litigious society. Anyone that has flown extensively in the US system, both in their radar covered airspace and their very large areas of non radar airspace knows that they system is one of the best in the world.
You appear to be bound by the old flight service uncontrolled airspace mentality. Because flight service officers were not allowed to use radar, we are still not using the benefits of radar in all of our low level radar covered airspace.
Lefthanded Rock Thrower, I left Australia in 1982 to commence my world flight considering that we were the best in the world. After the first half dozen countries I flew through, I realised that we were still in the 1930’s when it came to airspace and procedures. This was mainly caused by people who had their minds closed and simply wanted to keep the system we had used for decades.
To provide a proper minimum safe altitude alerting service at Benalla would cost nothing. No more air traffic controllers, no extra radar and in the case of the Benalla accident, six people would no doubt be alive today if the changes had been introduced.
Keep your mind closed if you want to and wait for the 100 plus deaths when an airline goes down at a place like Proserpine. Then the Royal Commission will no doubt force in simple NAS procedures, which will allow the air traffic control radar to be used as it was designed and assist in preventing CFIT accidents.