Look Slamer...no one in Ansett wanted to do anything with Air New zealand....no one put a gun to the New Zealand board to buy Ansett we wanted nothing to do you with you people...unfortunately TNT and NEWS sold out...but before that Air New Zealand was a half partner for about 2 to 3 years...Singapore was to buy for 500 mil...the wise NZds paid 680 mil after stopping SQ...WHY because exactly right mate Ansett would just about wipe Air new Zealand of the Pacific route, and put a huge dent into QF.
Why do you think SQ bought into ANZ, thats right to get at Ansett through the back door, but the obstacle was the foreign ownership of ANZ so who better to stop that than that pinacle of human intelegence Helen Clark that would belive anything Anderson told her...the fact is SQ AN and ANZ would have been a formidable force and Dixon knew this, Anderson was Dixons pawn to stop this...as it was easy after the great and inteligent New Zealanders stopped the SQ buy of Ansett...and what did Helen Clark say..."before we were made to buy that limon" really..why didn't you New Zealanders just go away, but no, its egos of the likes of Cushing and the rest of the stupid Air New Zealand board getting even for all the years of Ansett flying around in NZ that clouded their judgment and of course scared of a formidable Ansett accross the Pacific.
As was said in crew rooms around the network in Ansett...and it was said with enourmous anger and venom at Air New Zealand at the time when Air New Zealand stymied SQ " Those F......G!! New Zealanders would rather have 100% of nothing than 50% of something "
This whole episode was so pathetic and only at the hands of New Zealanders it could have happened..as I called it the Midas Touch of the New Zealanders....meawhile the NZ taxpayer took it up the you know where with the so called pineapple with the rough end first...just look at how much money was waisted at this sorry episode, and Murdoch is laughing all the way to the bank...he surely must love New Zealand now...and is saying what smart people they are, as he has over 1.3 billion reasons to say that...