Originally Posted by
AerialPerspective
The reporting at the time said the company had collapsed. You can mince the words any way you like, there was NOTHING beneficial in that bid for Qantas or Australia. Seriously, 'must remain in Australian hands', yeh, by some orchestrated manipulation of shareholding like VA International, Ansett International, et al. A tiny percentage of the equity in Ansett was assigned to a shelf company called 'Ansett International' so that it technically 'complied' with the 'rules'. I don't see AN International still flying after NZ cut the AN subsidiary loose.......
You must have sourced some of your material from the media or journalists because you referred to the "Qantas SALES Act" - I remember journalists incessantly getting this wrong at the time - it's the 'Qantas Sale Act 1992 (Cwth)'.
So no reference to that journalistic scoop you were wailing on Costello about, an irrelevant reference to Virgin and Ansett International and pointing out a spelling mistake on my part (you're quite correct, it's Sale (singular) not Sales).
You can argue till the cows come home about whether the APA buyout of Qantas would have been good, bad, neutral, better, worse or indifferent. On the basis that Qantas's subsequent management has been pilloried almost incessantly since then it's probably not difficult to make an argument that APA couldn't have been worse. The truth of the matter is that we'll never know.
As was noted by many at the time, though, the restrictions of the Deed of Undertaking went well beyond anything binding the then current management of the airline and the $10 billion in investment went beyond anything the airline was then capable of.