It's great to hear cool headed, reasonable replies from the ATCs, its certainly changed my opinion of them (in a good way).
I agree this has to go much higher than us grunts, and the incompetence at the top of ASA and CASA never ceases to amaze me.
I don't believe this discussion is at all wasted and its good to see that it is coming to the attention of people like AJ and the mining companies, as you would expect since they are losing big coin each week, so it might take a while but maybe something will actually get done.
In the mean time at least this thread might alleviate some of the ill feeling between ATC and pilots.
Cheers