I took my first ever trip to Sydney in late December, and was turned away from the SQ lounge and sent to the NZ lounge. Had a ticket in BF, and had my 1K/Star Gold card too. They basically shooed me away saying that if they let all the Star Golds in, there wouldn't be any room for SQ passengers.
I thought that was a bunch of BS at the time but I didn't fight it at the time and didn't really mind anyways, as I thought the Koru Club was pretty nice. But I did want to check out what SQ had to offer. Oh well.