And all of that went out the window the day the airline industry was dergulated. Today we have start ups like Tiger and 10 or so years ago like Virgin that have/had no industrial/employment footprint this country except a few jets and are able to cherry pick what they want.
You have Emirates which for some reason is allowed 5th freedom rights to dump A380's on the trans tasman route whilst their maintenance is being carried out by majority people from the 3rd world hired to work in Dubai.
You have an executive team at the former national carrier staffed with executives not from a traditional airline background pushing excellence in safety with $$'s invested locally, but with wheelers and dealers in Canberra trying to remove any hindrance to their plan to shell the company out to make it a full service Tiger Mk.2, within the bounds of the Qantas Sale Act. (14 Intl a/c by 2020)
Governments these days are more interested in providing a playing field that is intended to ensure competition is fair in a utopian globalised world. But the world isn't and this country will be good for 3 things soon, digging up dirt, writing laws to dig up the dirt and serving the miners and lawyers at mcdonalds.