Not much of an answer, but my advice is to be persistent. I fly to Oz reasonably often, and which of AA and QF price out cheaper depends as much on the phase of the moon as it does on any availability issues I can see. There has been quite a lot of discussion on the incentive travel certs. (which I am yet to try myself) but Flight Centre has given me some decent prices on AA ticketed flights. They don't do online sales but you can sort out pretty much everything by e-mail which is convenient enough if you are traveling.