In short, one word....politics. In more words, the evidence.
VA, foreign owned, Qantas available to fill the void.Leave it to ‘the market ’.luckily Oz hasn’t been as bad as other countries so someone has maybe stepped in...maybe.
Rex, foreign owned, Operations in National party homeland, Qantas not a direct competition. The major beneficiary of government aid to the aviation sector.
If Qantas were to get into severe stress do you think for a moment any politician would want to have the death of the ‘national carrier’ on their hands? If VA had gone under Qantas would have become (and maybe rightly so) a national asset and would have been effectively nationalised just as AirNZ have. Witness the demise of the Virgin NZ operation in the blink of an eye whilst AirNZ have received a number of government guarantees. Exactly what would happen here.