DJ737 - You are 100% correct, of course QF competes with those other carriers.
QF94 you are correct as well but believe you cannot look at it by city pairs alone.
QF 94, you mentioned Malaysia, according to the stats MH flew 46,935 out of Oz in August how many of them were happy to wait 3, 4 or 8 hours for the KL / UK flight? I have tried to find the numbers without much luck but would it be 10%? That's not much and QF are happy with their sevices via BKK, HKG & SIN.
However, what if it was 50% heading to Europe? Do QF compete then? QF offers 2 destinations only and MH flies to the same 2, so yes they compete. MH also fly to Paris, Rome and Amsterdam.
Look at AMS. Say 100 pax fly from Oz to AMS p/w - QF do not fly there so, do they care? What if it was 10,000 p/w would QF want a piece of the action then? I'd say yes and therefore they do compete on the Oz / AMS route even if via LHR -it's only a few hours of inconvenience
flying via LHR isn't it?
Then next year QF throw more pax away by only offering 2 return flights p/d via SIN to LHR and 1 to FRA. With the extended stop overs in BKK and HKG that puts them in greater competition with the likes of Malaysian especially when the A380's services a chockers. 