The group hasn't had any effective leadership for a long time. The staff can't relate to AJ or any of his immediate subordinates. Combine that with throwing good money after bad towards cock ups like Red Q ,Jetstar Japan, Jetstar Pacific etc while QF belt around in clapped out 767's to ever fewer destinations and you have what you see here now. I agree that the fact that Australian workers are heavily unionised makes it trickier to achieve the same productivity as overseas competitors, but Australian carriers can make money if run well. With strong leadership and a simple transparent strategy all QF employees would be pulling in the same direction. As it stands now most don't even know what their goal is because the posts seem to move every six months.
As for overheads, of course , all that is required is a competent board and CEO, I imagine the first thing a new team would do is to stem the flow of money into offshore start ups that return nothing. That's a given, what isn't a given is descent leadership.
Anyway, that's just my opinion, I hope the staff get some good news soon, something they can hang their hats on and work towards.