Aside from my earlier thread (trying to sort out my domestic focus going forwards), I've got another item on the horizon: A long-awaited trip to Australia in December. While I've got a placeholder Y award ticket LAX-BNE parked, said ticket is fully refundable without fees (thank you Elevate Gold!), the idea of crossing the Pacific in Y was never high on my list...and VA appears to be even stingier with award space than either I or the staff at the time of the placeholder booking expected (the VX-AS merger may not be helping).

So, I need advice on picking a carrier to park a Business Class ticket with. I can get to any of the main international gateways in the US on VX with an "internal" award; ditto HNL. So US airport is basically "whatever". On the Australian end, as far as I'm concerned SYD, BNE, and MEL are co-terminals (there's an overnight train BNE-SYD and one MEL-SYD). Ditto Canberra.

As far as getting the rest of the way there, however, it gets...interesting:
-FJ is the cheapest carrier at $2508-ish for a one-way ticket LAX-SYD and $2091 HNL-SYD. Unfortunately, they don't have lie-flat BC (though I've heard it's still a decent angle-flat) and their refund fee is 50% of the initial fare ($1000-1200!). This is mildly problematic on the off chance my trip blows apart. On the plus side, you get a day in Fiji (and potentially a touch-and-go at Christmas Island).
-HA is next in line. If HA had their new lie-flats in place they'd probably be my go-to at their present pricing ($2782 HNL-SYD/$3435 LAX-HNL-SYD)...but that rollout appears to be going glacially slow. They're also apparently non-refundable; if they were refundable I'd be tempted to gamble on the lie-flats...but given that I can get a better seat on a ton of domestic DL and VX flights the idea of a recliner on a trans-pacific flight doesn't thrill me much more than Y does.
-OZ is a strange outlier more due to their strange marketing ("Business" is apparently an angle-flat product while "Business Smartium" is full-flat...jokes about someone being too smartium for their own good come to mind). Their pricing is more favorable than HA, and incidentally $2751 JFK-INC-SYD saves me a lot of domestic travel games. The $200 cancel fee isn't horrid, and that appears to be refundable.

-NZ is the cheapest of the lie-flat options (hovering around $3660) LAX-AKL-SYD/BNE. The refund fee is $500, though, which may eliminate it from contention.
-SQ is next ($3710-3740 SFO/LAX-SIN-SYD) and there's destination flexibility within a few dollars (they serve most of the main airports in Australia). The refund fee appears to be $300. It also looks like doing this would have a not-insignificant chance of knocking me to SQ Silver (partly due to basically tracing the Pacific Rim).
-VA is next at $4735, but no refund fee. This was my preferred carrier from the start (I will confess in part due to a certain meta of being able to stitch together a trip involving the "three Virgins"...VX in the US, VA to Australia, and VS HKG-LHR-IAD...but also because of what I've heard about VA, mostly in a positive light). Consider VA to be the "cost ceiling" for this trip.

CX and QF more or less eliminate themselves on cost ($4939 and $5037, respectively...plus $600 in cancel fees on QF), though QF gets the Unusual Pricing Award for charging less JFK-SYD than LAX-SYD, in spite of it being one flight.

So...my instinct says SQ from LAX/SFO (if I really want a lie-flat) or FJ from HNL if I'm not going to get too worked up over that. Am I missing any serious options (which don't overshoot VA in cost)? And for those who've done it, how much is lie-flat vs angle-flat worth?

Edit: Refund/cancel is important because, while I intend to be in Australia come hell or high water for a chunk of the trip, knowing the family I'm coordinating with I put the odds of a major implosion/explosion of the trip at about 1-in-5. Suffice it to say that there's a history to be had of vacation meltdowns.

Edit 2: One option I had forgotten: VA BC LAX-SYD-LAX comes to $3900 (someone please explain this insanity to me...the idea of an R/T being minimally more expensive than an O/W makes at least some sense, but being nearly $1000 less is just strange), which is why I had remembered a lower fare for the VA leg(s). Does anyone know what VA's policy is if I fly the outbound and then bin the return (since I've already got my return happening the long way around)? I'm also prepared to just stick with the round-trip since I'd only eat perhaps $150 in fees...or to book an insanely far-off return and screw with getting back to Oz later.