And don't fool yourself this automation dependency will never happen in Australia. It has long been with Australia's major and regional operators already and CASA appears disinterested as long as regulatory boxes are ticked.
Anecdotal as always - but when you have a domestic airline first officer offered a visual hand flown approach into Hobart in broad daylight by the captain and replies hesitantly that he would rather watch the captain because he had never done a manual approach into Hobart (basically a joining procedure on the downwind leg), then you realise that either his line training needs to be looked at, or his self confidence. Or both. Two or three cyclic simulator sessions a year to meet CASA regulatory requirements are clearly insufficient to maintain manual flying skills; especially as they are mostly button pushing highly intricate flight management exercises rather than practicing the basics of hand flying.
One cannot help feeling sorry for today's pilots who are so welded to the automatics and the magic of the magenta line, that many have become privately apprehensive of hand flying an average jet. What an indictment and a sad reflection of today's airline pilot lack of basic manual flying skills. Crews can be constrained by company SOP, and perhaps personal laziness plays its part too. It could also be argued that training departments must bear a fair amount responsibility for the current situation apropos automation dependency. What is certain is the problem will not go away and as someone remarked earlier the Air France A340 crash is just the visible and tragic tip of the iceberg.