how come we never bring in professional negotiators and pay the money???
I think you'll find they did during the EBA8 negotiations. It was a waste of time because Qantas do not negotiate. Look at the entire history of every single EBA negotiation with every employee group and they have all been hostile.
The only thing that lead to an outcome last time not to their liking was the fact that the costs of the battle finally outweighed the gain from the company perspective.
And yes it was $160million supposedly the figure that needed to be reached before Qantas was willing to accept a payrise in total not even 10% of that.