Not excusing the Company here but many people forget that the Qantas of the late 70-80s was nothing like the size of Qantas today...... even if the ultimate aim of the current Board is to make it so.
Qantas in the early 80's flew a smallish number of one type of aircraft on the longest average sector length's in the world.
The ASK's and sector numbers from the two incarnations of the same Company simply do not compare. What matter then is the rate of incidents; something that would be very interesting to compare.