A nice post, Keg - it basically says something that a wise old Captain said to me years ago, after I stuffed up an approach and had to make a go-around. My profuse apologies to him were met with the reply, "I don't drive with my nose stuck in the rear view mirror."
Good advice. Learn from the past, but don't linger on it to the extent that what's ahead of you becomes less important than what is behind.
Unfortunately Oz aviation was introduced to wholesale "scabbery" in the '89 Dispute. But to put things into perspective, it took the airlines some 5 or 6 months to achieve ONLY a 22% scab rate.
Putting that another way, 78% of the (4) companys' original pilots BELIEVED within themselves that they had a just and right reason in trying to have their employers reconsider.
Of that 22%, well over 1/2 occurred after 4 months.
I would imagine that any "inherent weaknesses" within QF would probably be within a similar range.
No comfort for a management who decides to take the group head on!
And so looking FORWARD, young Keg, my opinion is that you need to unify the QF pilot group.
In a word - INTEGRATION with all QF pilot groups, or at least a unilateral agreement between all the pilot groups as to how you can all "slot in".
As unpalatable as it will seem in the short term, I believe the medium to longer term advantages will be worth the short term pain.
I'm sorry to say that I can't agree with Spad, wrt amalgamating the AFAP and AIPA. Quite frankly, with my scant industrial relations knowledge, I don't see any advantage right now in joining up.
QANTAS needs to get their own house in order through the auspices of AIPA, and the Federation needs to secure the ground it has.
But that is only my opinion.