It appears your partner could transfer from Membership Rewards (Australia) to Starwood Preferred Guest to Qatar. Example:
40,000 Membership Rewards
20,000 Starwood
25,000 Qatar
1.6:1 isn't much worse than the 3:2 (1.5:1) that you would have achieved if the International Dollar Card routing worked (and I have not accounted for the exchange rate differential when transferring points from an Australian to USD account.).
Don't procrastinate. The SPG program ends is about 45 days.
Great idea.
If I moved from AUD - USD the points would devalue by 0.75.
That means 200000 would become 150000 MR points which would be 100000 QR miles. So it would be 2:1 overall.
Your suggestion is much better! Thanks.
UPDATE: SPG only allow a maximum of 79,999 points to be transferred
And rate from AUS MR to SPG is 2:1 and then SPG to MR is 1:1!