Dick, why would you want to re-employ 700 FSOs? The reason there were that many is because they were spread over a number of remore locations where they operated air/ground radio, intercom channels and briefing. Briefing and flight planning are now on line so that reduces the number required.
With the advances in technology and the training required, re-employing people who retired twenty years ago would be a big job.
The Airservices Learning Academy is built around ATC. Rather than going back to the 1990s and Flight Service, it would be more efficient to employ a few more ATCs. That way everyone would have common training and equipment and able to rotate between high and low level positions during a shift.
This isn't a union grab for more power. It's just a way to efficiently use what is already there.
On another point, it isn't all the fault of Airservices and CASA, many private pilots are too lazy or tight fisted. This goes back to when charges were introduced for charts and documents, pilots stopped buying and keeping up to date with changes. It's easy now with products such as Oz Runways to remain current but some don't want to fork out nearly $1000 to get set up with an iPad and subscription let alone become familiar with how to use it, so private pilots blunder through and think the more radio calls, the safer they are. There is an airfield in the same CTAF as where I fly where every CCT seems to require broadcasting one's life story.
This then links to the death of GA and flying training. It's just plain expensive compared to what else is available. Up until the 1990s if you wanted to fly, that's what you did. Now there are so many cheap thrills available. If you want an aviation experience you can do a warbird flight, a tandem jump and/or an aerobatic flight and still have plenty of change from the $30,000 cost of a PPL for half a dozen overseas trips, a new car or a house deposit. Flying just doesn't have that much attraction any more.