The issue with macro automation is a little overblown in my opion. Yes, there is a lot of power in the VBA approach, but M$ themselves tend to break these from version to version. I was part of a team looking at this issue for a fair sized company and we concluded that the risk of change in the VBA language was too high to use it for much beyond "toy" automation.

YMMV, of course. And I'd like to see better from OO, but it takes a while to catch up to features that have been aded over years in M$ Office.