Originally Posted by
KRUSTY 34
Does anyone here actually trust politicians? No, thought not.
Once the election is done we may see a change in attitude towards REX, despite whoever wins. The complexities of saving a heavily foreign owned and controlled regional airline as opposed to letting “nature take its course” will probably be the deciding factor.
Bonza, Tiger, VA, Ansett! And yet REX is somehow different!
Well, yes, it is differently largely. Reason being that Bonza did not throw the market into turmoil, other existing operators picked up the slack, Tiger was owned by VA and it's flying was sent to VA, or to JQ I assume. Ansett went but there was QF and VA to fill the void, although it took a long time for that to settle down.
Difference with ZL is that there are many routes where they have no competitor and that are subsidised to ensure there is a service, presumably because it would be uneconomical to run otherwise and no one is rushing to put their hand up, leaving the regions affected stranded. For those who say that the 'market should sort it out' - the market won't. The 'market' is only interested in profit and to mount such services and make them sustainable would mean prices through the roof - that's why the government (of any stripe) subsidises it in the first place.
I don't have a problem with that, the same as I don't have a problem with the government using funds to build the NBN (I just wish the intervening government hadn't screwed it up and spent billions more to build an inferior NBN, leaving the incumbents now, to string the fibre between all the places where the predecessors ran it to, short of the premises, to make it what it was supposed to be) because it's called being a 'society'. It's why we all pay a certain amount as a levy to our taxes, based on our means, so that people who wouldn't be able to afford medical services have them provided. The contrast to that is the USA, where they don't give a crap and you just die in the gutter or lose your house.
It's why we're called the "Commonwealth" of Australia. The 'founding fathers' so to speak very deliberately chose that title, and were met with vehement objection from Westminster and the Palace, citing some nonsense about Cromwell executing a (treasonous) king, as if any of them were alive 300 years earlier when it happened). In a rare display of 'up yours' for that time, when we otherwise did everything 'Mummy' told us, the Federation movement said 'bugger off' essentially and the title was adopted officially, regardless. Completely off-topic to the subject of the thread I know, but the history of federation is quite amazing - I only recently discovered that original drafts of our constitution included a requirement that State Governors "shall be elected by the people" and similar was considered for Governors-General. These provisions were removed in later drafts for various reasons, and for compromises in other areas.