Have you tried putting a random audio clip on the synth audio/automation track?  It seems like that might work...
 
Also isn't it possible to declare which track the automation shows up on?  I'm not sure if you can do it after the fact, but it's part of the "insert synth" dialog, right?
 
I agree that it's a place Sonar is lacking.  A lot of little oversights having to do with editing structure.

I'm sure I've done this successfully though sharke.
 
I'll be home in a couple of hours and try it again, see what happens.

It definitely works fine here 100% of the time.
 
In X1 I usually avoided putting automation on busses because the 'delete hole' was buggy.
 
X3c 64bit here and it's working no probs.
 
Cheers - Cliff

OK so now I suspect that I have some kind of corruption going on in the project I'm trying to do this in. 
 
I've been trying "delete hole" over and over again and finally it moved the automation. But there's a new problem. It only moved the automation if I had "move by whole measures" selected. However, with this selected, it moved everything 11 bars to the left, not 12. Without it selected, it moved all the clips 12 bars to the left but not the automation. 
 
So to be clear, here is what's going on now
 
1) I have 12 empty bars at the start of the project
2) I have synth audio tracks that have automation in them, but obviously no MIDI or audio data since it's just a synth's audio output track
3) If I lasso all of the clips past bar 12 and drag them over to bar 1, everything moves except the synth automation
4) If I insert a dummy clip 12 bars long into the start of the project on one of the tracks, select it, then select all tracks, then "delete special" with every option selected and "delete hole" with "move by whole measures" selected, everything including the synth automation is moved 11 bars to the left, so I still have one empty bar at the start of the track
5) If I do the above step but without "move by whole measures" selected, everything is moved 12 bars to the left but the synth automation stays where it is. 
 
This is all shades of messed up. 

I often move things by cut-paste rather than dragging (old habits die hard). This seems to work for moving automation on empty audio/synth tracks if you use Cut Special (Ctrl+Alt+X) and check the Track/Bus Automation box.

sharke

StepD
That's one of the cases where you need to split the simple instrument track first, then drag select over both the midi track and the audio/automation track (making sure the midi clips are completely within the selection). Then you can drag to a new location and recombine the tracks when finished.

It's not a simple instrument track. I was talking about the audio track part of a MIDI/audio synth pair. It has automation on it, but of course it has no audio or MIDI clips in it. If it did, then the automation would be selected with the clips. 

Well, same thing then except you can skip splitting the track since it already is split. Select and drag.

brundlefly
I often move things by cut-paste rather than dragging (old habits die hard). This seems to work for moving automation on empty audio/synth tracks if you use Cut Special (Ctrl+Alt+X) and check the Track/Bus Automation box.

If I select everything and do a Cut Special, "clip automation" and "track/bus automation" are both grayed out so I can't select them. 

StepD

sharke

StepD
That's one of the cases where you need to split the simple instrument track first, then drag select over both the midi track and the audio/automation track (making sure the midi clips are completely within the selection). Then you can drag to a new location and recombine the tracks when finished.

It's not a simple instrument track. I was talking about the audio track part of a MIDI/audio synth pair. It has automation on it, but of course it has no audio or MIDI clips in it. If it did, then the automation would be selected with the clips. 

Well, same thing then except you can skip splitting the track since it already is split. Select and drag.

This is what I was doing (see original post). The problem is that the automation on the synth audio track is not dragging with everything else. 

New oddities: when I get the whole project in view and lasso everything, all of the clips within the lasso are selected except one which stays unselected. So much frustrate 
 

sharke
 
This is what I was doing (see original post). The problem is that the automation on the synth audio track is not dragging with everything else. 

Can you post a quick vid of that to see exactly what you're doing? I have no problem moving both after marquee selecting.