Everyone knows that Airservices is not short of controllers. The CEO has said so on many occassions. Hell, there is a whole bunch of press releases going back years calling the controller renegades. If they were short they would have taken the controllers union to Fair Work Australia to ensure that they work overtime and threaten them if they could not provide a reason why they forfeited a day off. Hell, if they were short, controllers would be called 2,3 even four times a day on their days off to come to work. Controllers would probably even be turning off their phones. And Airservices is involved in a massive restructure of the airspace requiring huge amounts of training for unknown gain – this simply could not happen if Airservices were short of controllers.
I don’t know where you get your information from Ben. Cmon! Airservices are definitely not short of controllers.
Doubt that there would be one ATC group in ASA that wouldn't benefit from more staff. The staffing numbers, although improving are really at a knives edge, increasing traffic (and not just through the major hubs), large numbers of staff with 30 years service who can retire with minimal notice.
More staff would enable the update of training programs, more staff would permit accrued annual leave and long service leave to be taken, more staff would enable operational ATCs to be released to the college to train the new recruits (rather than rely on retired ATCs, not that there's anything wrong with that...), more staff would enable more services to be provided (think Port Hedland, Wagga, Taree, Emerald), more staff would see an effective fatigue/staff management that doesn't rely on staff being called on their days off to fill a hole in a roster, more staff would enable direct operational input into the future ATC system (does it have a name yet)?