Originally Posted by
Colonel_Klink
I actually don’t know where to start with that article.....
By reading it anyone would think that the the defence facility at Tamworth houses multiple squadrons of F18s and F35s and that it’s pivotal to the nation’s defense. Excuse me as I roll my eyes in the knowledge that the only thing that flys there on behalf of the defence force are CT4s. And obviously the defence force doesn’t care particularly about this as they contract the work out to civilian operators in the form of BAE.
Again the article seems to suggest that the Chinese are running the defence force out of town - again BAE at Tamworth lost the contract and all RAAF ab-initio training is going to be conducted at East Sale. So no flying training will be conducted at Tamworth from October 31.
Except the article fails to mention that CAE have opened up a satellite operation to add to their already significant amounts of flying they do at Moorabbin. And would it shock anyone to know that CAE’s major clients are....Chinese airline cadets. In addition to this it is probably worth mentioning that a significant number of the major flying schools in Australia have contracts with overseas (and most are significantly Chinese) airlines.
So here is what I can’t fathom - where does all this scaremongering about Chinese airline students come from and why? When people of the likes of Dick Smith are complaining about the demise of GA in this country - how can he then go and get all up and about when there is the possibility of a major GA flying school about to commence operations. When the likes of Barnaby Joyce are complaining about the demise of rural towns (and shifting large government departments to these towns) - how can they be possibly complaining about this flying school going ahead. The school is going to be training airline pilots - not Chinese military pilots who are going to learn the secrets of Australian Defence Force aviation. Do these people need to be reminded of the significant benefits that a flying school like this could bring to a regional centre like Tamworth - especially considering the RAAF have elected to stop basic training being carried out there? Here is a tip, go and ask the communities of Mildura (Pearson’s- training Chinese cadets), Ballarat (Singapore Training Academy - training Chinese cadets), Wagga (Rex training academy), etc how they feel about the increased business that these schools have brought to those regional centres.
To train 500 students a year you would need close to 100 staff (flying instructors, engineers, refuellers, etc, etc). The amount of money (read jobs) that this would bring into the town is significant. And this is also the same reason you had multiple regional cities bidding for the Qantas training academy - because businesses like this breed jobs. And on a side note, Qantas have said that they want to not only train Australian pilots, but foreign airline pilots as well (queue the outrage). They have said they want 500 pilots a year - and it won’t take three guesses where a lot of those foreign pilots will be from.
I get a little sick and tired of Virgin having the boots sunk into it because of its ownership structure. Virgin is majority foreign owned, which it is perfectly entitled to be. But what perhaps Dick Smith and the like seem to forget is that they employ 10,000 Australians. I know my family don’t give two hoots about the fact some Chinese companies own a minority stake in Virgin, they just care that the pay cheque arrives every fortnight. And I bet that is the case for the other 10000 families that Virgin have employees with.
This article, and the people quoted in it, should be called out for what they are.
How dare you bring logic and reason to a perfectly good virgin bashing thread.