It's a pretty sound argument actually. Kick's are useful with either a stronger lineout or more pressure on the chase. Without either, deep kicks against a much stronger kicker achieve nothing. Convince me that anyone, even including those not in the current squad, will be going to be able to compete with Saffa, AB or Pom out of hand kickers. Bet you can't.
It isn't a sound argument at all. Saying that we might as well accept mediocre kicking because we don't have kickers as good as the competition is like saying we shouldn't pick the best scrummagers in the front row because they aren't as good as the africans or kiwis. Would you rather give away 5 scrum penalties or 1?
Cooper very quickly demonstrated he is a superior out of hand kicker to foley and it assisted us agains the ABs. Would you prefer our exit ends with their lineout on their 45, or our 40? Because you are selecting the latter when you let Foley do the kicking.
We can't avoid kicking even if we want to. We need to kick out of our own halfbecause you can't reliably (or at least, we can't) control the ball out of your own red zone and move it down the field. Even the ABs usually don't try that.
You don't need to have the best kicker in the planet to improve your position by kicking and you don't need to have the best lineout.
We are giving the ball away as it is, either through turnovers in the tackle, or knock ons or chargedowns, or poor kicking. If we can't control possession, we might as well influence position and play the game in their half and not ours.
What's infuriating is that there are now several players in the setup that can kick well. DHP, Hodge, Cooper, yet we still ask Foley to do the kicking.