The company that has the contract for line clearance here in Queensland Eastern Trees is fairly large
http://www.easterntrees.com.au/ they have smaller business units operating in the regional centres like Townsville or Cairns. Their work is as indicated by others here slightly better than the loppers, and they have policies and standards to which they should adhere. In the last three (I think three) years they have had a qualified Arborist working in their Qld operation Cassian Humphries. Cassian writes numerous informative articles in one of our professional magazines Arbor Age, and has in the last 12 months developed a very impressive training package for Eastern Trees supervisors relating to recognition of tree defects and proper pruning approaches to manage such defects.
What I'm getting at is that as a utility company Eastern Trees is slowly developing better Arb standards and practices, it is slow, and there are still many problems relating to unskilled crews etc... But it is a start, Cassian is a very passionate dedicated bloke who always gives 110% I take my hat off to him, not sure I could operate in that environment but he is.