The recruitment process should have been opened up industry wide from the beginning. Merit based........lol.
hotnhigh - I can't quite understand your logic here. The cadets had been through the Qantas recruiting process before, and as such Qantas had invested time and money into them. In some ways they were already a 'Qantas product' and therefore of course Qantas is going to look at them first before recruiting afresh.
They subsequently made them resit the recruiting process because of the time elapsed and in a display of genuine integrity some were deemed not suitable. That does show people are recruited on merit based performance.
If you don't understand that of course Qantas is going to start with the cadets who had previously been successfully recruited then I suggest you take a breath and rethink it.