Interesting. Either the announcement was never going to be the 24th and that date was always mentioned to wrong foot the various other interests working against Qantas management, or something else has been going on behind the scenes to prompt QF to jump early and so to try and pre-empt and minimise the next salvo coming at them.
I suspect the latter.
Either way, I don't think today is going to be a pleasant day for QF, it's workers or the future of the airline.