Plovett, I disagree that the attempt to take QF private was above board although I'm absolutely sure it was technically legal.
Qantas paid Macquarie $300 Million in consulting fees to make it "legal". (Or they would have if it succeeded, so it was reported - I never read how much money actually changed hands in the end).
Almost anything can be "legal" with a sufficiently expensive bunch of lawyers to defend it.
Let's face it - who else has $300 Million and the motivation to fight it? Certainly not the Government - the politicians including the opposition looked at it, didn't like it, but said they couldn't definitively argue that it was against the Sale Act.
It clearly was against the intent of the Sale Act - it was a foreign takeover structured so that it didn't look like a foreign takeover. Exactly what the Sale Act was designed to prevent. But $300 Million buys a lot of lawyers. Somehow they found a way around the wording of the Sale Act.
By the way, who was ever held accountable for that waste of money?