In most respects Bodum, past experiences tend to taint the future. Sadly, human nature dictates that you go with what you know, rather than swim with change (once bitten twice shy, and all that)...
Most of the Qantas crew I know and have flown with have been lovely people. There are, unfortunately (and it must be said in both camps - link and mainline) those individuals where the least said, the better!
What you will find Bodum (and I agree with you also - an FA is an FA), is that Link Chicks get the short end of the straw from all aspects (QF, management, etc). because you're 'not really Qantas' (those, by the way, are the words of some of our previous management to our crew in what was supposed to be a motivational roadshow)...Having said that, how quickly was our name changed to 'Qantas' when QF1737 had the attempted hijacking? And apparently we were Qantas trained as well...funny, I don't remember going through any Qantas training (nor, for that matter, my 300-odd colleagues)...
What you will also find (and as you have probably read) is that on top of ALL OF that, we take great exception to being given this treatment by our PEERS within mainline - a select few of whom believe that because they fly on 767's or A330's (and we on the Dash's and 717's) that we are 'lesser mortals', because 'you don't know what it's like to fly on a REAL airplane, because yours are soooo tiny!' (this also was a comment made by a subload FA on one of my services). A joke maybe? Not particularly funny to me (it might have been, were I drunk at the time - but alas, 0630 sign ons prevent that...)
Really, at the end of the day, we couldn't care less what others thought (not obvious of course to those having read this particular thread...)- we just turn up, do a great job and go home (and when we have the money, crack open a few bottles of chardy and waaaaaaay-heeeeey-heey!).
We do assume the worst - for fear of having previous bad treatment repeated (yes, we should all move on, and most of us do - others, understandably, can't).
And bodum, the paranoia that we possess wouldn't exist in the first place were it not for the actions of a minority set of individuals within mainline spoiling what could well have been a great relationship.
This, like all things, will change over time (I hope).