[toyg]

> Java 17 was released last week and half the places have only just started using 11

That's not Australia, that's just Java. Most companies who bet on Java 10 years ago did so because it was a stable and conservative platform; they were not going to accelerate their development practices just because the vendor started telling them to.

Most friends and colleagues in Java shops are all in the same boat: they're barely done migrating from 8 to 11 and they don't really know when they'll move further (although it should be easier). Maybe they have the occasional greenfield project on a newer release, but the bread and butter is always on the old workhorses.