At least in the bad old days for the Knights, we were pretty much putting out our best teams; they just weren't very good. IDK that we can say that about the current Australian lineup.
Australia seems to be trapped, continually showing faith to blokes who haven't returned it, with a few blokes who are much closer to past it than they are to their peak.
PS. I know the Kostas experiment didn't work (but he's young), but surely they haven't got the balance right between player development and reliance on trusted old stagers.