The Business Premium booking class needed for GE is R.

If on the same booking as a GE, both the GE partner and the GE requests clear at the same time automatically.

If the request is made from the GE's account and if you see R2 confirmation is generally immediate in my experience. (Once I was contacted and told there was one seat available (R1) was there and "would I like to upgrade one and have the other pending".)

If the request is made from the partner GE's account, generally you will need to contact Airpoints and ask for confirmation - I have used the Gold.Elite email address for this.