Neatly conflating two issues here.
First of all Ron & Edna, its you who are the sad case because it has been proven over and over again that protecting QF's 30,000 jobs is costing many more than 30,000 jobs elsewhere in the economy - so your argument is the usual special pleading of a rent seeking group, as economists would call it.
It is simply not in the national interest to protect QF from competition because it has been shown time and again that the only way you can get efficiencies and change in business cultures is via the blowtorch of competition.
Let me give you an example. Before the Button plan to remove protection from the car industry was begun, Australian cars that were produced were overpriced bits of ****e that cost twice or more as much as their overseas counterparts. They were technically backward, they were low quality, they performed badly, they were produced in antique factories in the most innefficient way possible.
Why? Because management had absolutely no incentive to improve whatsoever because they were protected by 100 percent tariff barriers, so they could be as slack as they like, as could their workers, with no penalty.
The penalty of course was paid by the Australian consumer, who paid double the money for half the car compared to overseas consumers. And when you multiply that type of protection by a lot of industries, you get a crap economy with zero competitiveness and poor jobs growth (the economy must grow on average about 3.5% a year to provide for natural increase in labor.)
However, we grew up and took the decision to dismantle industry protection - with one important exception - you guessed it - international air travel. And since both Labor and Liberal power bases are in Sydney, and Qantas is a totally Sydney-centric airline, Qantas remained protected.
The net result of that decision is that Qantas can produce an overpriced, substandard, unreliable international air service, biased in favor of Sydney against other state capitals and still produce a billion dollar profit.
The reality is that that profit is paid for by every Australian, not only the ones that have to fly in your aircraft and experience your disgusting service, but every Australian who is denied a pay rise, or a job opportunity, because the economy cannot grow as fast as it should with Qantas's hands around its throat, strangling growth in International trade and tourism.
I guess I personally should be hoping that your airline continues to be cossetted by your Sydney mates. That way, when the end to your protection finally comes, as it will one day, you will experience total collapse because you have failed to adapt like the dinosaur did. And when it finally happens every State Premier except the Premier of New South Wales will cheer!
And its BS to say that 30,000 aviation jobs would disappear if QF folded. Nature abhors a vacuum and other aviation jobs would appear for those whose skills were actually worth something.