You're right on all your statements and most of your assumptions, but please take into account the following:
- there was no automated testings before I came here. QA guys did all testings manually, slowly, step by step as written on their wikis, by hand.
- there was no standard for automated tests and no preferences for auxiliary scripting tools.
- considering the python knowledge. At this point there is me and one more guy from support with perl knowledge against one developer and one team lead with stated python backgound.
- I did provide the test suite as a helper tool to speed up the testing process. Those guys from QA was excited about it but then this management came with their decision to rewrite the whole test suite.
I insist this is rather irrational decision.