The above situation essential means a select few young hopefuls (read silvertails) are really the only candidates elligible for said cadetship. This in turn, financially excludes a great deal of what may otherwise be very good candidates.
You need to expand your horizons to the way these things work in the Northern Hemisphere. It is not the "silvertails" but your average Joe being taken into these schemes. At the end of the "selection" process the main criteria for being accepted is their willingness to sign a loan application. These candidates are often the dreamers who always wanted to be a pilot but could see no way into the industry until that glossy brochure hit their doorstep. There is a branch of a certain "local bank" in the New Forest in the UK that has done exceedingly well from writing loans to cadets. Their quiet little branch must have books that are out of all proportion for their location.
Cadetships in Australia today are an abomination. They are simply there to make money, exploit the most exploitable, and in the process drive down the wages and conditions of all professional pilots (thereby making more money)!
This is the problem, not the cadets. This form of cadetship is an industrial problem that creates safety issues and is used to undermine the financial ability of employees to have a stable, financially rewarding career.
The financial stress these cadetships place on the candidate, combined with all the other cost saving measures that airlines use when employing cadets such as: short term job placements, summer contracts, small monthly retainers combined with flight pay etc. lead to highly stressed, low experienced FO's in the flight decks of RPT airliners. They spend most of their time out of work eating pot noodles in share accommodation worrying if they are going to get called in off standby so they can make a few extra dollars to pay the bank loans, rent etc. They will work regardless of their state of health/rest as they need the money. Often they will have a second job. Spend some time in the cruise with these guys and you will hear plenty of tales along these lines.
Can someone explain the rationale as to why a commercial enterprise (airline) shouldn't be allowed to identify a market (cadetships) and turn it into a profit centre, which provides greater shareholder return, and greater business certainty by guaranteeing a stream of appropriately trained pilots for a known distance into the future.
The safety and industrial implications alone make this a morally abhorrent view to take on this type of scheme.
If a company sets up a cadet scheme that manages a fair and equitable way to shoulder the financial burden and produce well trained cadet pilots who are able to focus on their primary job, then more power to them.