Waren9,
That article to me seems to make one very valid point:
"Air New Zealand was losing money in the second half of the year, but its domestic network was highly profitable which explained why they continued flying"
So the decision to 'ground' service by Qantas may have been influenced by the fact that this was not going to have an impact on their profit. The more worrying suggestion though is the fact that Air NZ continued to fly as they couldn't afford to impact their highly profitable domestic operations since the rest of the airline is bleeding cash. I think from a 'safety' point of view flying to maintain profit is slightly more 'risky'.