The situation regarding "licenced" AME's has always been the same at QF.
I have seen people who have held mulitiple foreign licences (not approvals) and who had been previously employed at DMM level at other airlines having to accept an AME position at Qantas, and the company would not always lift a finger to help them with CASA. I can go back to the late 1960's to blokes who held full UK ARB licences.
As far as QF AME's gaining licences outside the QF system goes, if QF don't want to pay you for it that is their choice, and you will in their eyes still be an AME.
Long gone are the days when they automatically accepted people getting a licence by means outside of QF and automatically reclassified them.