Thanks for the info Mwenenzi.
Like I said, I'm not interested in award flights, just upgrades.
You seem to be recommending Singapore from my 3 choices, as the only Asian AL.
The idea is to build from a bottom tier by gaining tier points asap. The higher your status, the more chance you have of an upgrade.
I already understood that the bottom grade would get you very little (nothing at all!).
As QF points are easy to come by here in Oz, I've read of many people with 100,000s of points that they simply can't use as they are on the bottom tier.
The problem with the Asian AL is that they don't do S America & S Africa except on partner ALs where the points awarded are lower.