This may be true, there are certainly a lot of people in HIA currently but anecdotally business travel is still down and new/revenge travellers may not become loyal or valuable long term. This is a bit of a finger up to those who took the "renew or be downgraded" messaging at face value though and have been spending money. That messaging and the associated offers were perfectly reasonable and very generous. People had a long time to take advantage of them or choose not to.

QR could be in the position now where with extensions from early 2020 until end of 2023, they are paying out for lounge access etc for higher tier members flying other oneworld carriers all that time but who haven't spent any money with QR since 2019. Something that encourages people to spend money with QR to earn or renew status makes much more sense