Qantaslink is not operated by Qantas
While that's true at a technical level from the perspective of the air operating certificate, for purposes of ticketing, the frequent flyer terms and conditions refers to the QF code on the operating flight. What they're doing is excluding codeshares, where the flight is marketed as QF but operated by an entirely different airline with its own IATA code. This doesn't happen with Qantaslink, they only have the one QF code, thus they're still "Operated by Qantas." This should be clarified in the master terms and conditions somewhere.