Those are all reasonable points, however one thing that you said which is slightly incorrect is that you need to start paying back the course before employment, if a delay to employment with Jetstar is incurred. As the course is now entirely covered by fee help (cap increased to $150,000 for aviation) repayment of the course doesn’t occur until the minimum wage for repayment of government education loans is reached (around $50,000 per annum).
If you find yourself waiting for employment with JQ and you choose to work and earn the minimum repayment amount, then sure, you’ll start repaying the course fees, as is the case with any student debt. But like I said, the past few courses have incurred little delay.
The Qantas cadet program is still being run by a 3rd party contractor (FTA now, the first one already pulled out), so while it will be qantas branded and may have some more input from QF, I don’t think that particular aspect of the program will make it leaps and bounds better than the JQ program.