Hey guys,
I just wanted to post a follow up to my itinerary. Originally the last two legs of my trip involved going from SYD->HNL->LAX. The SYD->HNL leg was on a QF codeshare operated by Jetstar. There are QF metal flights that do this route, but nothing available at the time.
None of the agents we worked with in planning the itinerary brought up any issue with this leg. It wasn't until the day after we sent the itinerary off for ticketing did AA contact us to say it wasn't allowed. After trying multiple times with different agents the final explanation we received was that after ticketing AA sends each leg off to the respective carriers for approval, and Jetstar denied the award ticket which was beyond AA's control. One agent believed that QF codeshares operated by jetstar are fine on all-partner awards and explorer tickets that are paid for, but couldn't cite any actual rule.
In the end we had to take out the HNL portion (sigh... first world problems I suppose.) Which led to the rates desk messing up our taxes again, but the second time around it was a little easier to fix.
Just a data point showing a QF/Jetstar flight not working on the explorer award ticket.