Interesting to also hear the critisism of lean, underripe, austere wines. The more common critisism I am used to is jammy, overextracted and alcoholic
Perhaps this is a perspective unique to a man that tastes thousands of wines a year, from across the price spectrum; unable to hone in on the wines he knows he likes. We don't have such limitations.
In any case I agree with the thrust of the article, not unique to Australia mind you, see Luca Maroni when rating Italian wines for example (he seems to pull back in other regions though).
As always it's an easy problem to identify but hard to solve. Wine ratings are inextricably linked to wine sales; I have attended numerous tastings, some quite intimate, with a well known up and coming "critic" (sometimes claims not to be a critic). They have explicitly said to me that they see their job as selling wines, only paraphrased slightly. This is probably true of most critics, whether admitted or not; they need to make money somehow. Most of their financial models involve wineries/sellers paying to display scores on websites or promotional materials - why would you pay for a low review?
On top of that there's another perverse incentive to rate higher. When you rate wines highly, your ratings appear more often, thus building your public brand. When was the last time you saw a JO review at Langtons, versus the other critics? Obviously this leads to an eroision in trust, we are all familiar with Halliday's inflated scores, but what does that matter when wineries only submit their wines to you and your reviews are the only ones that appear without having to buy subscriptions to websites/books?
Those of us here that obsess overmuch about wine probably have a hierarchy of wine score validity, at the bottom is old mate bottleshop attendant, then your wine snob mate, then Halliday, then TWF, then HH, then JO, then Enthusiast, Spectator, Advocate and finishing with your own damn palate (which is faultless). YMMV on the position of these; the point is, I'm not sure it's a huge issue for the educated Aussie wine consumer, even less so for the casual consumer. Just makes us look a bit silly on the world stage. Might be a bigger issue when, reductio ad absurdum, every wine is either a 99 or a 100.
Probably telling everyone here how to suck eggs, but sometimes writing it out can help get your thoughts in order on a topic. Will help the next time I am two bottles deep and arguing about wine ratings with someone.