Alan Joyce and his Mahogany Row are doing a pretty good job lobbying the Sydney centric Libs with their rent-seeking. Ultimately, to receive a hand-out would be just like the Australian auto-industry, globally uncompetitive and destined to fail. If it's a bad business model it should fail, propping it up with hand-outs robs Peter (taxpayers) to pay Paul (QF board.)
This has always been political and bigger than the Qantas brand. The Australian public need to decide many things going forward in their (unproductive) lives. Amongst them is whether Qantas is an Australian icon or not. In this globalised world I don't think any "brand" can or should claim they're local.
Therefore the QSA should be abolished. Any tinkering by giving hand-outs to "compete" or "level the playing" field is being disingenuous and a waste of tax payers money. Qantas claiming that Virgin aren't "playing fair" is also a furphy. Qantas thinking that 2/3 of domestic traffic should be theirs is fair and equitable??
Perhaps Qantas complaining about Singapore etc don't like the free market priciples they operate to, hence their worry about being uncompetitive?
Qantas invests heavily off-shore in their Jetstar brand. VAA doesn't invest off shore. It could be argued that the Virgin brand is present overseas, however they're all completely separate businesses run by a varied and diverse range of interests (albeit with some having a minority philanthropic equity stake by Richard Branson himself), unlike Qantas which clearly controls it's many Jeststar iterations.
Qantas is iconic in my mind, but being a free market person, it shouldn't be protected in the way that is currently being put forward. Seems to me that its actually VAA that is seeking a level playing field, at least domestically. 50% Qantas and 50% VAA is level, not 2/3 Qantas 1/3 VAA.
Ultimately, this is about Australia's competitiveness and where Qantas sits in the Australian psyche.
However, this just plays into my long held belief the board have been using all this time to it's advantage. Trash the brand to such an extent that the share price plummets to encourage a private take-over bid and get a nice payout. Amusingly, If not leveraged too highly, this would be to all Qantas employees and hence the Australian publics benefit.
