QF Policy in the past was to not recruit from its own subsidiaries. (i.e. QLink at the time).
Given it has an obligation to take back pilots on LWOP, and also an obligation (albeit a different and maybe more moral one) to take industry placement cadets from QLink with the cost, schedule disruption etc associated with training their replacements, I think it would be very unlikely to see QF add further to its crewing problems by recruiting any more pilots from JQ or QLink than it is obligated to. Why would you?
Interesting times, but if I were at JQ right now, (and not in an MOU) I'd be concentrating on making the most of my career at JQ as I'm very very unlikely to find myself at QF.
At Qlink we've heard similar ever since I started there in 2008. We even heard back then "If you want to join Qantas, start at Rex, because if you start at the link you'll never get in."
In 2007/2008, Qlink had a 40% turnover of it's pilot group. Mainline didn't want them, so some went to J* (not sure how a group company poaching from the link creates any less training debt than if they go into mainline). Most of the rest went to Virgin, Cathay, and Dragonair.
Dragonair and Virgin were rumoured to have stated that Qlink was the best training department for their pilots; at the same time mainline were rumoured to say that TP pilots couldn't mentally transition to jets.
Fast-forward to last year where Qlink lost 40 pilots to Cathay. This year 12 (and counting) to Emirates, with up to 20 more rumoured to go to Cathay. Add a few here and there to Virgin, EFA, and one or two other airlines.
Word on the street is that someone in Qantas HR has (finally) realised that it's better to recruit from within the subsidiaries because 1: They are already a known quantity, with accessible training/personnel records; 2: While there is an extra training debt if we don't hire them they'll go somewhere else. This will result in the same "extra" training debt and we've just lost that corporate experience; 3: If they know that there is a pathway into mainline they MIGHT not look elsewhere.
DIVOSH!