Sunfish,
have to both agree and disagree with you on some points.
1: Slash and burn management is ridiculous, completely agree. I have no problem getting rid of non productive roles, far too often they come to dominate the workforce rather than the other way round and everyone wants to be a corporate type instead of getting involved in the actual work process.
2: I actually think debt will become CHEAPER in the not too distant future. Reason being the banks and other investment houses are sitting on massive piles of cash, be it from being bailed out with our money (they should have been forced to liquidate assets as the penalty the free market imposes rather than being bailed out with tax $$) or from their retail customers or whatever. The problem at the moment is they are currently not lending due to increased "credit concerns" at the "credit committee" who have to sign off on any loan whatsoever.
Currently they regard this as a prudent situation, they call it sound financial management etc.
And the lock up of money means minimal supply which is currently driving rates up.
BUT
Longer term they NEED to place that money somewhere. As confidence returns the lending flow will resume. And once it does those who lend early will lock in place some of the currently quite high rates. But as they do that will signal to the market that certain institutions are prepared to accept risk again and all of a sudden there will be the usual herd like mentality of bankers and they will all rush to try and claim the safest clients as quickly as possible. Qantas will rate as an excellent client and they will be inundated with offers as opposed to various low cost carriers or BA or other airlines who have much larger structurally embedded financial issues.
For confirming evidence on the banks piles of cash Google Krugman and see what he has to say on the matter.
Note that this does not mean it will get better for everyone, just those highly rated clients. Lower rated companies will have to wait until the exuberance of the bankers means they are willing to accept greater risks before they get allowed back into the tent of ultra competitive interest rates.
3: Currency appreciation is not always a good thing in terms of a nation's ability to win work. Taking China as one example you mention if their currency appreciates then they become relatively dearer in a world where the USD is the contract standard.
Equally when the Aus$ appreciates the way it has off shoring starts looking exceptionally cheap. Taking the move of the Aus$ from about US70c to US100c that means things are now about 50% better value (i.e. 30c in 70) for the same number of Aus$. That makes off shoring far more attractive and anything priced in US$ is also looking cheap. Doesn't matter where you purchase those items in the world, the US$ standard applies everywhere.
4: Qantas can now hedge at a far better rate than they have been able to for years. Sure they will have a certain amount of funds hedged at 70c and the like, equally they'll be scurrying around hedging whatever they can at current rates less a risk factor, and given the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Aus economy to the US economy those risk factors are currently less than they have been for years, probably decades. Sure, they may cost themselves a few cents of potential upside, but they can lock in and guarantee there is not 30c or 40c of downside. That's a great risk:reward tradeoff
5: Whilst I agree skills are extremely important we need to understand that cost effectiveness is important as well. In order to earn the $$ from operations to keep paying costs (inc staff costs) there will always be a cost benefit analysis that some people don't like because they disagree with any reduction in expenditure on certain things. Maintenance is one, nurses and school teachers are another. There's a strong emotive argument to be had but the facts are that people will simply not pay what it takes to cover higher maintenance costs or salaries for certain "worthy" professions. We don't necessarily like it but the very existence of low cost carriers (as an aviation example) indicates that a large number of customers ARE price sensitive despite what they say. Surveys will tell us time and again that people WANT to fly Qantas or BA or some other full service airline but they CHOOSE to fly Ryanair, EasyJet, Jetstar etc when they have to open their wallets.
Like it or not there's a tradeoff to be made, and given airlines like Singapore don't have aircraft falling out of the sky it's a very attractive option to have their people do maintenance at lesser costs than the Aus operations cost. As much as we may like to think we do the best maintenance anywhere the simple fact is that plenty of others do it just as well as we do and their planes fly just as well as ours. That's not going to be readily accepted but it is the way of it.
6: When you outsource with a high value Aus$ you get a lower cost on your checks, plus you avoid the need for capital expenditure for new tooling, facilities etc. Sure you pay for it as part of the check cost but that's a one off immediately deductible expense rather than a depreciable asset.
Again, we may not like it but that's the reality, the tax system actually stacks up against certain longer term investment.
7: No argument on training. I have never and will never believe in asking people to pay for their own training. I am perfectly happy with training bonds, if the company invests in the person then the person should pay that back. It's a two way street, the company SHOULD invest in people, the people SHOULD repay the company with some service in return. There's fault on both sides, too many companies don't/won't invest in their people, too many of the people they do invest in then take those skills and go elsewhere. A sensible training bond system covers both parties fairly.
Quick last one for Gobbledock: The Aus Govt broke? Methinks not. For all Howard's faults at least they were relatively prudent managers in the good times and paid off all public debt unlike Blair/Brown. Rudd/Gillard may be/ have been spending like drunken sailors but there's a way to go before they totally screw us up. Not to say they won't, but we're not there yet.
That's enough for now, probably get hit with a character limit or something anyway.
regs
R