Dale, there is also a suggestion coming out of the union movement and also from Barnaby Joyce, that the bidders might already have a buyer lined up and may just “flip” the company to a third party of perhaps dubious provenance. For this reason Barnaby is suggesting the Sydney gate slots and possibly terminal space need to be ring fenced to avoid crowding out of other potential airline users.
This situation at least in Barnabys mind, is potentially akin to the Murray Darling disaster where Chinese and other purely financial speculators with no interest in agriculture have purchased and control large quantities of water rights, to the detriment of genuine irrigators.