Gee, I fly to Hobart (using 9,000 AN points) for a couple of days, and look at the size of this thread while I'm away. A few comments:

1) QF should look at its other problems first. If I ask someone a question via email, chances I will get an answer, often not a decent one, eventually. Get realistic. Answer your email promptly and efficiently, or don't have email at all. In particular, I booked a redemption flight online, then saw that an even better (for me) flight was available one day. I emailed QF and they didn't bother to reply for 6 days, by which time the seat wasn't available any more. It's utterly pathetic. Would a caller on the phone be put on hold for 6 days? If not, why can't email that requires 1 min of someone's time be answered promptly?

2) I was QF Blue for 3 years. Out of my 3 free domestic upgrade certs, I managed to use just one. The upgrade certs are practically useless, can't be converted back to points, can't be converted to lounge passes, can't be converted to anything useful.

3) I gave up on QF after several years of elite status because of the introduction of the pathetic tier credits system. The new version is better, but still awful.

I went through 2 of my recent Star RTW trips and calculated the status credits I would have got on QF for same trip. Totals: 28785 miles and 28919 miles. With UA, that equals Star Silver + 15% of the way to Star Gold for each. With QF, my itineraries came to 240 credits in both cases. That's 69% of the way to OneWorld Ruby.

Still a long way behind.

4) I don't really care how "points" are derived, but Australia has been metric for decades. Most people know the city-city distances in km, if they know them at all. Yes, I'm prepared to convert them to miles to work things out on a US airline, but I don't see why I should have to for Qantas. At the very least, QF should list all their distance tables in the correct units.

5) One question I haven't seen anyone ask: What about open-jaw redemptions? Ansett officially allows open-jaw redemptions. Some of the US airlines allow open-jaw redemptions. (eg. UA, even though I've never seen it in print anywhere.) If the new QF scheme not only (effectively) kills multiple-stop itineraries, but also has no option for open-jaws, this makes it quite inferior to other schemes.