Personally i don't see a valid argument against Cadet schemes from the business perspective. The company does not have any obligation to prop up the Australian GA industry.
I have many years in the Left seat of a Heavy Jet as a trainer and check captain and i am yet to see tangible differences between GA pilots and WELL TRAINED Cadets.
To answer turkeyslapper, the difference is that RAAF pilots go through a much tighter selection process initially and then subsequently have significantly better training than GA pilots. Not one hour of RAAF training is spent drilling aimlessly through the sky to build hours. Every single hour of flying has a syllabus, objective and outcome, and in the end produces a far more capable 200hour pilot than does the cadet scheme. By means of validating my comments, i have been through both processes.
By this I am not inferring that RAAF pilots necessarily end up being better aviatiors in the long term, but certainly at the 200hr stage RAAF pilots are better prepared to undergo type training to sit in the right seat of a big aeroplane than is the average GA pilot with 200hrs.
What this all boils down to is the level of training received. Cadetships are entirely appropriate if they encompass sufficient training of an adequate standard. On the other hand, cadetships that rely on the lowest cost provider to pump out minimum standard pilots are a recipe for disaster.
I have been involved in Cadet Schemes that take people who have never flown an aircraft and eventually put them in the right seat of the most modern commercial aircraft in the world. The caveat is that they sat next to training captains for a minimum of 120 sectors, which causes a significant cost to the company through increasing training resources to cope with the training burden
So if you want to mount a case against cadet schemes, make sure you get some facts and compare to successful and not so successful cadet schemes around the world. There is no doubt cadet schemes can present a threat to both safety and career aspirations. Just make sure your arguments are based on measurable facts, because you can be sure the company's will be.
Lastly, there is not point pissing around with letters to CASA, your local member, Crikey or giving money to random organisations. The biggest pilots union in the country has forced a Senate Inquiry into exactly this issue. The inquiry is taking place as we speak. If there is any possibility of forcing change it will be through this mechanism. And conversely, if this process not highlight the fact that CASA is asleep at the wheel and jolt somebody into action, then we may as well start sending of our applications to Truck Master.