Your location is "SJC" but you haven't flown in the US for a year? Wow! Kind of an inverse-MR. The US changes allow metal cutlery (but specially shaped knives, which cannot be use for stabbing or cutting) are relatively recent, circa Oct 2006. As there are very few flights with cutlery now operating in the USA it wasn't hard for US airlines to add metal cutlery to their flights. But Australia has a long tradition of having "quaint" requirements for airline travel that don't make much sense and are not effective (other than at aggravating pax). The plane spraying with insecticide being a case in point (replaced with something far worse, for the most part, but out of sight and out of mind).