Other airlines, such as Emirates allow beards, the same Emirates that Qantas allows its passengers to fly with under its code share agreement. So if Qantas says this is a safety related issue, but feeds its passengers into a beard clad Emirates under a code share, it would then follow that safety of Qantas passengers isn’t really that important, and that it’s just an attempt at control.
Or perhaps Qantas need to tell Emirates pilots to shave too?