I think a big factor is our commentators and media combined with the video ref.
They seem to have taken the confidence out of the decision making.
Take last night for example with the Evans "try". All the commentators expressed their opinions rather strongly for 4-5 minutes whilst showing replay after replay - and all talking themselves into a frenzy over whether he was short of the line, held, double movement etc.
But Gus made a comment after all that - along the lines of "well the ref was right there, he practically had his nose in there so he should know" and that's the issue.
In the ref's opinion he thought he'd scored but just wanted confirmation and there was no absolute definitive proof that he didn't get it down on a blade of grass that was painted white so they've got to back the ref.
Not one of the other commentators backed up what Gus said - "yep, fair enough he was right there, he's got a better view than us so we'll live with it". So all we hear and read about is the initial banter.
In my opinion he was held but...
Whether the decision is right or wrong is a moot point, it's the system that is weakening the referee's ( and touchies ) authority. They are scared to make a decision incase it's not right, there are umpteen forward passes a match and the touchies do bugger all when really all they've got do is offside, touchline, forward passes and back play.(Look at Blair holding down Thurston last week as an example, four officials but none of them did anything - did they see it?)
Don't get me wrong, I yell at the TV with the best of them and replay stuff just to check that what I'm seeing is what I thought I saw - and the ref/s didn't.
How often do you see the AFL media rip into their own like ours do?