Originally Posted by
MickG0105
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.
Just because the story isn't archived somewhere, doesn't mean it didn't exist. The reference to VA and AN is not irrelevant as it demonstrates how a veil of 'Australian ownership' can be created by manipulative accounting.
Looking at just a smattering of LNP trade agreements and other 'rules and regulations' they've created over the years, most have turned out to have holes you could drive a truck through. I mean, this is the same treasurer who, against all advice, sold the Commonwealth's entire gold reserves almost and here we are 20 years later and those reserves are worth substantially more in real dollar terms except they belong to someone else now. Great job Pete and John.
We've seen piss-weak 'regulators' created by the LNP and just recently in Victoria, the Casino regulator set up by Kennett has turned out to be a lame-duck, despite all the rules and regulations passed at the time (and yes, subsequent governments of both colours share responsibility for not fixing it) but it all leads me to be suspect that any 'Deed', enthusiastically endorsed as extensive by the LNP-fawning press is likely to have had the same weak-willed enforcement.
Just one example of this would be the free trade agreement signed with Thailand by the current government. It was supposedly a 'free trade' agreement and thus allowed Thai built cars to be imported in Australia but what they didn't tell you was there were multiple clauses that effectively allowed tariffs to be applied to Holden cars exported to Thailand (when I lived there, there was often Statesmans and Commodores on display in shopping centres as 'luxury' vehicles).
I heard the reports with my own ears about APA - I may not be able to find them but they did exist. It is obvious the Board at the time endorsed the offer because it was 'compelling' and 'represented a premium over the traded price' - don't recall any mention of enthusiastic endorsement of the plans for QF.
As for now, I see airlines all over the world folding in this crisis and Qantas isn't one of them so the current management can't be THAT bad.
I might add, as opposed to extensive pages on this forum 6-7 years ago lauding what a genius and a saviour JB was, along with the cronies he brought with him to VA, constant waving of the flag about he was going to take the fight to Qantas and take its market.
Yeh, all the same things were said about him and his acumen that were said about APA in some quarters - well, we know how JB's tenure ended and the affect it had on VA ultimately.
But we agree on one thing, we will never know because it didn't happen. However, the evidence of such takeovers around the world are smattered with very few successes and mostly disaster. Often even the disasters are not entirely evident because of someone coming in later and having to put it all back together.