It must be a stress thing, or a deficit of simple civil society ... the struggles at Airservices.
From the users side, I nearly always feel the Australian ATC are doing a good job, and they deal with me as a "consumer" very professionally. The grumpiest controllers (on occasions)I have come into contact with are Bankstown, but they probably get subjected to all levels of variable competence,language variations, and traffic loads. I'm reassured by the proceedural strictness of the Australian air traffic system.
Rest assured... air protocol doesnt allow us pilots to say more than the briefest of thanks, and the job satisfaction can't come in practical terms from that kind of feedback...however I'm pretty sure everyone who flies safely in and out of our controlled airports is pretty aware of the good service they are getting.
I had to put down at Williamtown suddenly last year when some unforecast IMC with very low cloud base hit the area ...the controllers were great .