No one could foresee that anyone would deliberately act against the interests of something so cherished.
Cherished by us, but not by them. They just see the bucks...
We speak of Australian icons. They are icons to us; brands that we grew up with and were proud of. The problem is that they were/are all commercial concerns; we iconifed merchants
. We elevated them to a place in our national identity that none of them ever deserved. Ask an Australian what is 'Australian' and often they will list a number of commercial brands, rather than ideas or real achievements. They'll talk about Qantas, Vegemite, Arnotts, Holden(GM) and Golden Circle, who at the end of the day were all nothing more than merchants selling a product that could be equalled or bettered by foreign imports. They sold BS and we bought it; for many decades it was a happy arrangement.
Maybe the current Qantas MO is to debase the brand so far that when it flounders the average Australian no longer cares. Maybe they're trying to make us hate them; maybe that's all part of the plan.
Then, when they say 'Qantas is dead' they hope the public will all quietly agree (damned unions
) and the managers will each walk away with a big bag of cash from the Arabs and the tacit support of the mainstream media
.
If that's the case then we are nothing more than players in their great scheme to make the public hate Qantas and brush aside its passing with a collective shoulder shrug, while they grab the cash and comfortably retire. Maybe they don't want Qantas to be successful; maybe that's their worst nightmare.