Presumably the agreement is up for renewal at some point (or perhaps has some break clauses), so the decision makers at QF/EK must have some spreadsheets giving them numbers to justify wether to carry on. It would be interesting to see those numbers and how they are calculated.
From an Australian or European passengers point of view, many places in Australia/NZ connected to many places in Europe via one-stop is great.
I think where the arrangement sucks is the perceived inequity in that QF is only flying MEL-DXB, SYD-DXB once a day whilst EK has multiple frequencies and BNE, ADL, PER as well. If the flying DXB-Oz was split 50/50 then I suspect any negativity around the arrangement would be lessened.