One thing I recall from the reserves and I don't know if it applied to the regs is as the F88 was being introduced there was an abundance of blank rounds available and we never did any weapon handling with unloaded weapons (even had blanks loaded for major parades and practices for them). Our weapons were loaded most of the time, If you stuffed up everyone knew.
On the other hand once we got Steyrs the early 90s defence cuts were well in place and we were issued with few, if any blanks. I recall only one exercise when I was issued them for my personal weapon and then it was only ten rounds, followed by another five once I expended them in our one and only contact.. Every other exercise, weekend, or training activity my personal weapon was just dead weight, the only time anything was fired through it was annual qualification shoots.
So in my first three years 90/1-93/4 my (and everyone elses) rifle was always loaded, From then on, especially my last three years 96-98/9 my rifle was only loaded with anything on the actual mound under the direction of multiple safety officers and that was only once a year. From personal observation soldiers were much more careful around weapons that were likely to go off than unloaded training props, they would not only maintain their own disciple but monitor their mates and step in if they saw bad practice (i.e. fatigue related errors), as there were real and obvious consequences when you had even a blank round in the chamber. On the other hand when your personal weapon is always unloaded, it can never go off no matter what you do wrong, to the point I even saw one bored solider absently cycling his weapon before a WO2 stepped in (cant recall if it was a 49 RQR Ready Reservist or a 9Bde reservist, we exercised with both).
Long story short is people become complacent when they believe there is no danger, especially if there are regularly no consequences for poor practice / behaviour.
