Ok but say what you want, give me today's airliner safety record over the 70s, 80s, 90s or early 2000's. And looking at Australia's in particular, I'd have to say system is working, overall.

Do mistakes happen because pilots are still humans, of course. Unless your plan is to only interview and hire skygods (let me know how that goes).

You are confusing the topic here, and that's whether MCC is required by Virgin and as a side whether it actually has any practical benefit to safety. A modern jetliner is not any safer than a 1970s one because of MCC (the course requirement brought in the last 10 years). Its safer mostly because of the advances in automation and support services, such as better weather prediction and monitoring, widespread accurate navigation (especially since the advent of GPS), better air traffic control systems and many other small parts of the puzzle that has made flying a modern airliner pretty much something anyone can do. And yes during the 70s/80s and 90s we learnt a lot about human factors especially in regards to the human/machine interface. Most of that has been built into airline training before 2000 in procedures as well as in theory. Having another course that just makes money for a third party is just rubbish, and there really is nothing to show for it as the procedures have been standard in the airlines for over 20 years. However that being said, is ATPL still based on the 727 for flight planning?

One thing I learned in my time in the airlines is that if you don't regularly practice something, it just leaves your brain like water evaporating. In the old days you might come from single pilot IFR in a Chieftain and that first sim at the airlines was probably the best IF flying skill you would ever attain. The same goes for rubbish theory courses to tick boxes, unless its built into day to day operations then none of what you learn will be retained. The odd Sky god might retain some of that knowledge for party tricks to show the FOs during a long boring sector, but the footy is usually a more interesting topic. I had the pleasure of demonstrating DR in IMC over several sectors in an airliner many years ago, when we were transiting beyond navaid range, and the ####ty FMS had fallen over (multiple occasions), the FO had #### all idea, including how to calculate descent point relative to a time rather than a distance, but hey, it's all GPS now, right?.