Creampuff. I won't speak for CASA or ATSB but just for a moment reflect just on Airservices. If what you say is true i.e. "no longer have the critical mass of knowledge, skills and attitude to identify and resolve them on their own initiative" and they have so much trouble with an interesting permutation of responsibility of FIS WX provision, how do you think they might be going with core service provision, like conflict detection, resolution and monitoring?
Given significantly increasing traffic, an increasingly worrisome age demographic of remaining controllers and essentially no new system to replace TAAATS, many inside Airservices are identifying a "perfect storm" between now and when ever AFS/CMATS might be commissioned and then presumably many years after provides a more automated capability than TAAATS. Perhaps Ben Sandilands is closer to the mark than many think. Many people outside Airservices would be surprised how "manual" and human centric the ATC system is as Ben tries often in vain to identify. Interestingly as you have suggested many seem to have confused Heffernan's frustration with his usual form, this time I'm not so sure. If you carefully watched the Senate streamed video of that day, there was more than just Heffernan who were shaking their heads!
In a strange turn of events, many of Airservices managers' harshest critics are now showing those same managers great sympathy after the Senate bashing. From my perspective just this week has certainly brought forward some very interesting opinions mostly based on 20th century paradigms and seemingly lacking common sense and a core misunderstanding of why the senators were so aghast.