Originally Posted by
Platinum A332
The former chief economist of Qantas was on News 24. Made a couple of interesting points;
- The international arm of Qantas should be renationalised, to put it on par with all peers making Qantas uncompetitive (specifically naming EK, SQ, TG and MH amongst others).
- Australia's air treaties should be looked at.
Even though this sounds like a good solution this will mean one of two results.
1.) Artificially (using a tax, duty etc) raise the cost for foreign airlines are equivalent to QF. This would result in higher airfares. This is actually the case in the Australian book selling industry. And you can see the results of that where the same book in Australia is in most cases 30%-40% that of Amazon.
2.) Subsidise QF with (a tax break, employment grant, direct equity etc) so that it will have more funds to cover the higher costs. In which case we have to decide where the government cuts back to fund this. Defence, Health, roads, schools?
If we continue down this like what jobs will we protect next? Allied Audio Tape Makers Union? Floppy Disk Makers of Australia? Office Memo Delivery Persons Union? White Pages?