Bluff, tactics, negotiation. It’d be reasonable to think there’s more issues going on in QF HQ than COVID grounding for a large part of the fleet. For example outsourcing of staff that couldn’t have been outsourced in normal times. - just speculating
Reasonable speculation though. They'll definitely be using the crisis to extract concessions. Sstating that they will be parking aircraft for 3 years when they have no idea how long it will actually be is clearly calibrated to send a message to politicians.