The Chicken has come home to roost and going for an ultra cheap casual workforce will cost QF way more than if they had ever just kept the reliable in house crew that they just shafted last year.
About 15 years ago I worked at a place that wanted to cut flight crew pay by 10% due to some challenging market conditions at the time. When they asked for my opinion on that, I told them half the captains would walk to Qatar and Etihad (boom years) and the costs associated with a lack of bodies would cost tens of millions in cash burn for cancelled flights and some eye watering overtime rates for whoever remained. The executives disagreed and opted for the wage cuts. Needless to say they got it wrong, three quarters of captains walked and I earnt three times my normal wage that year. Executives however lived to see another day.