Thanks for the clarification re your stopover, EK004 regular.

I will happily stand corrected* if/when ultimately proven wrong, but I do believe Emirates will (with justification) stick to their guns on this one. All your flights may well have EK numbers, but - crucially - they are NOT all operated by EK. Plus ......the sector at the heart of the whole issue happens to be a domestic one. It was never the objective of the CD programme to provide pick-ups or drop-offs for domestic flights operated by a third party carrier (which, as I mentioned previously is an accurate description of your SYD-MEL journey) - even if you are then connecting to an onward international flight operated by EK themselves.

*and will be glad to do so simply because I could well be the beneficiary myself at some future point, given that I travel out to Oz with EK fairly often.