ampclamp has neatly summed up the Qantas CEO's defence in all this. All the pre planning in the world doesn't mean the decision has been made to 'go' with the action. Again, it wouldn't surprise me if they had booked hotel rooms for the preceding week- and perhaps the week prior to that also. AJ perhaps had even thought about the day after the AGM as 'the day the war began' and war gamed the possible scenarios but he still hadn't made the actual decision until the morning.
It's a bit like crew planning a diversion in the event of bad weather at destination. You put the ducks in a row, make sure you have everything covered in case you make the decision to 'go' but the actual decision to go can be made at multiple places between 'now' and 'PNR'.
I'm not condoning it, part of me even admires the forethought. I just wish they could show the same forethought about things like aircraft configuration, fleet disposition, crewing numbers, route structure, etc. If they put as much thought and effort into actually running the airline as they do trying to screw over the workers we'd be world beaters.