They don’t have anything to hide: its in plain sight. If both Virgin and QF outsource to the same secondary carrier it starts to look and feel like monopoly behaviour- pricing, quality, equipment all the same, just like in the days of the two airline model (split monopoly) except without the champagne.
It seems to me that Mt Isa is a natural small jet market. It will always be a branch line market served by branch line type aircraft. In 15 years there will be posts on pPrune about E190s with u/s toilets.
My home town went from eight Viscount and Vanguard services to six times DC-9 and four 737s daily to six DHC-8 in just 25 years. I moved to a real city and stopped caring.