Farmed out Consortium to Exalted to try to avoid this nuisance of a quest. Turns out, you still need to complete it for the Permanent key quest to become available.
After multiple attempts, and a bunch of Keys bought from the Auction House, the quest item still hasn’t dropped. This is so dumb. Really dumb. It is the last quest in all of TBC (currently available) I have yet to complete due to ridiculous requirements.
I just had to complain. It takes an hour of spamming general just to get 1 other person to assist me on top of spending 15g x 5 keys to even attempt it!! Ugh