Sunfish
Guys I understand your pain.
I feel no pain. I don’t work for either airline or work in Australia anymore for that matter. I am making the point that Singapore doesn’t play honest in business. They have operated this way for as long as I can remember. They are an authoritarian dictatorship that are use to getting their own way. I hope the Australian government is smart enough to realize this and not to give them everything they want.
What all of you are really talking about is industry protection.
No, what we are talking about is a level playing field. Any open skies agreement under the current environment won’t be on a level playing field. It will be disproportionately slanted in favor of Singapore at Australia’s expense. In this light until Singapore can show they are serious about playing fair then Australia’s aviation industry and full and free open skies should be off limits.
The screaming by Dixon and Co will be treated exactly the same way as the screaming by car company executives fifteen years ago. Remember the cost and quality of Australian cars back then? Remember how the sky was going to fall in? Today we export cars!
Tell that to the workers at the Mitsubishi Australian car plant. Australia’s car industry has ridden on the back of the low Australian Dollar not the quality of Australian cars. GMH exports a token number of cars to the Middle East but has failed to penetrate the most important markets of Asia and North America. It is also widely known that Australians subsidize every Holden Commodore sold overseas just to make them competitive. The same rubbish went on in the early nineties when Ford exported Capri’s to the USA. The same car was 40% cheaper in the US than Aus. It will be interesting to see what happens to the Australian car industry over the next five years if the Australian dollar stays as high as it has gone over the last six months.