Role of John Howard in the AN tragedy
I have reproduced the following article from the Aust Fin Rev (a world respected financial paper) published in the saturday edition. It is reproduced word for word. I have always thought that our PM had a very large effect in the collapse of Ansett. Now it seems that my suspicions are very much confirmed. He has now lost my vote in November. It is an absolute disgrace.......i hope u all agree..........!!!!!........& dont vote for him either. My early anger at Anderson on reading the article below may have been somewhat misplaced.
It reads............
The PM John Howard ruthlessly overrode senior miniters who favoured a singapore airlines plan to recapitalise ansett - a move that was to extinguish the last hope of survival of the airline.
An investigation by the Australian Financial Review reveals he had been successfully lobied by Qantas which wanted protection from an aggressive Singapore Airlines. Standing behind Howard in his strong backing for Qantas was his department head , Mr Max Moore-Wilton who served on the Australian Airlines board in the early 1990's when Mr Geoff Dixon was also a senior executive
Qantas's strategy was to block Singapore from gaining control of Air NZ and therefore Ansett, which it argued would becomea behemoth with the power to crush the national carrier.
Instead Qantas wanted to buy 25% or Air NZ and for Singapore to buy Ansett
Yet SIA Chief DR Cheong publicly rejected rejected the Qantas proposal on Monday July 30 , the day before a crrucial cabinet meeting to finally decide the australian governments position.
At that meeting, senior ministers including John Anderson & Peter Costello had been prepared to argue the case for the so-called Singapore option.
Ansett executives have told the AFR that the night before the meeting , Mr Anderson had told them he still preferred the SIA proposal.
But Anderson position in the cabinet meeting was undermined because his close ally, Costello, was unable to attend the meeting because thick fog prevented his plane from landing.
A Government sourse said Mr Costello was "incadescent with rage" at Howards intervention to back the Qantas proposal, which in effect killed the only viable recapitalisation plan then available to save ansett.
The PM's intervention helped seal Ansett's fate. Mr Anderson was obliged to travel to Wellington imediately after the cabinet meeting to convey the Australian Governments position surpporting Qantas. Ansett collapsed just weeks later.
Mr Howard had been persauded to torpedo the Singapore Airlines proposal by intensive lobbying from Mr Dixon and the Qantas Chairman, Ms Margaret Jackson.
Ansett executives have also confirmed to the AFR that Mr Moore-Wilton told Air NZ Chief, Mr Gary Toomey, at a meeting in Canberraon August 10 that "he didn't give a **** about Ansett" and said that the Government was doing everything it could to protect Qantasbecause it wasthe only truly Australian Airline.
Mr Howard himself explained his support for the Qantas proposal on September 18 when he told parliment: "The Government did unashamedly have a preference for what was called the Qantas option for quite some time - quite unashamedly-because we took the view that, if you are going to have two airlines, it would be a good idea that one of them was Australian owned.
But despite clear advice from Air NZ executives that Ansett was in dire financial trouble - losing $18 million per week - Mr Howard chose to rely on advice from Qantas that Ansett was close to returning to profitability.
During the week the Govt, faced with the heavy political fall out from the collapse, provided financial gauarntees to enable an emasculated airline to restart.
But there is no certainty that the airline will survive in the long term.
Thoughts folks............!!!!!!!