Strategy
It seems pretty simple to me.
By Shrinking QANTAS, and growing Jetstar they are reducing the liabilities of legacy airline conditions such as leave, superannuation,pay awards, over staffing, maintenance costs,infrastructure costs and probably a myriad of other things.
When Jetstar becomes a bigger airline than QANTAS ie if it gets to the point that Qantas is a quarter of the size of Jetstar. They could sell off say 75% to 90% of Jetstar which is the greater component at this stage of the QANTAS group and not beholden to the QANTAS sales act, essentially they will have bypassed the Qantas sales act and for the greater part got rid of 75% of their legacy conditions.
This is obviously a long term strategy which can only be accomplished over a long time, maybe a decade or two
The only problem with this strategy is that Jetstar is not making the projected profits and growth to financially accomplish this, and the danger and risk which is being realised is that the billion dollars that they have stashed away to support this strategy notwithstanding a shortage of income from Jetstar coupled with higher than expected set up costs and regulatory difficulties involved with launching Jetstar Japan and Hong Kong, plus fierce completion from Virgin are factors that are bleeding the group dry.
Consequently this high risk strategy may potentially bankrupt the whole QANTAS group.
They have rolled the dice and set the train in motion, and like any gamble or runaway train, the end result may by now be well and truly out of their hands.
Just a theory, which if close to the truth, probably seemed like a good plan at the time !