We do however get a refund of the taxes on the unused flights and we can claim reimbursement of our unused points from our travel insurance. How they are going to work out how many points to refund/reimburse remains an interesting question.
An update.
We have now received a refund of points for unused flights from our travel insurance. Basically calculated on a pro-rata basis (which was to be expected).
The way they calculated the points to be refunded was to take the total points for the Oneworld Award (280k per person) and divide that by the total miles to be flown on the original ticket; thereby calculating the number of points spent "per mile".
Then we needed to provide an "insurance letter" from Qantas to confirm what flights were flown and what flights were not. The insurance company calculated the number of miles NOT flown and multiplied that by the previously calculated "points per mile".
There are probably a number of variations of how to calculate the refund (number of flights, number of miles, cost of an equivalent revenue ticket, etc., etc.) but the outcome of their calculations was a little better than I was expecting so happy with that. Overall, a pretty fair process and I have no complaints; the travel insurance company have been very supportive and easy to deal with, and I would have no hesitation in taking a policy through them again.
The most difficult (and most time-consuming) process was getting a correct insurance letter from Qantas. You have to go onto the website and click on "help", then "customer support", then "customer feedback", then "customer feedback form", then choose "insurance letter" from the drop down box and then fill in the details.
If that isn't bad enough, you then have to choose the airline from a drop down box but if the flight cancelled (and chosen) is not QF, they will advise you to contact the partner airline. Problem is, the other airline(s) (LA, MH, UL +++ in our case) have no idea how many QF points you paid for the Award booking!
So the process comes down to: fill in the form quoting a QF flight (preferably one that was on the booking but if none then just make it up). You will get a reference number. Then ring the call centre and wait and wait and wait until they answer; then quote the reference number and get them to amend the details to what actually happened.
Then wait a couple of weeks; ring to follow up as to why you haven't received your letter.
Wait a couple more weeks until the letter finally arrives; then check the details (which will almost certainly be incorrect) and then send an email back to QF asking them to amend the details.
In our case, we never did get a letter that was totally correct (even after three attempts) but the last version was correct on everything other than the taxes, and as we were not claiming the taxes from the insurance company, it was of no consequence.
As the saying goes............all's well that ends well
