Despite assertions at the time from "management" that Jetstar wasn't going to take any Qantas routes and flying, that's exactly what they did - and continue to do.
The plan all along was to slowly transfer work onto Cheapstar to get costs down, because of those pesky (but world's best) flight crew and engineers were so expensive.
I wonder if this is the start of the same thing for their prop operations.
In five years time, will all the Aussie QLink Dash 8's will be flying around in Cheapstar paint schemes, fixing themselves, with pilots on half the money - and lining up to buy their own endorsement (read as "buy their way into a job")?
If they were prepared to destroy QF mainline with Jetstar, there's no reason they won't look to do the same with the Dash8 operations.
If I were a Dash8 QLink driver, I'd be starting to feel pretty nervous.