Stop griping will ya....you live in a fortunate country in fortunate times (historically speaking).

Sorry, we did!

We all want cheaper, well all want better value for money and we all want job security and better wages, more flexibility and better conditions.

Sorry, but you can't have it all, something has to give.

Rechtub You are a fair dinkum whynger. A knocker, a person that can see no right, except your personal views. If Qantas does not have the necessary skills to fix the row internally, that is for the shareholders to work through, it is a private company. If qantas was to go off shore, it would be to cut costs in areas other than baggage. So why does something have to be political, it is up to qantas.

579- it very much IS political, because Qantas would show the life-cycle of a formerly public-owned asset post-privatization:
1-First higher costs and cuts to service
2-Then cutting staff and taking underserved pay-rises as the asset becomes less functional
3-Extorting the country for more money
4-Get bailed out, and simply renege on your promise to use it to restore the asset, and instead skip offshore and let it collapse.

If anything, it's simply (another) warning of what happens when we let public assets be sold off to the kind of uncompetitive scoundrels that would covet a public asset as their own cash-spinner in the first place.

Shaggy Dog I understood your first post and that your pay was 5 pounds then not Rechtubs lurch away from truth.
I understand your pride in achievement and the work place you then had.
Changes see a airline quite different not one we own.
As a trade unionist Delegate and official I liked to be a good worker, I worked hard and had pride in both my job and achievements.
About the time you spoke of changes took place that sped up the work place and changed government owned to such as Quantas.
We know, we may not like it but know, Quantas, to survive is becoming quite different that it is even now.
We deep down, know it must.
And we know Australian jobs will go.
I ask this, our super conservatives/anti workers do you want Quantas workers to work for Asian wages now?
Are you willing to see Australian jobs exported forever.
Then can you not see, not know? understand QUANTAS grounded its fleet world wide.
AS AN ACT of militancy in IR? because the only union action under way was pilots wearing RED TIES.
Abbott, be warned, is pulling the wool over this country's eyes, miss using truth, lying,
Australia MUST consider letting other airlines fly on all routes in and out of this country.
Clearly Quantas used its protection to take MILITANT ACTION.
Unions doing such would be hung drawn and quartered.
Nothing Sacred about this Ibis to be Asian airline.

How, pray tell, will Qantas go 'offshore'?
By virtue of the fact that it would even land in Australia would require locally-employed people to do services for the plane- and it only gets customers because it employs Australian cabin staff on-board the plane. If it were to do services between cities, there is no chance it could use 'foreign labor'.
And I should point out that it's hardly looking after its domestic labor anyway- and cut flights- so the unions and employees have nothing to lose by complaining.

Of course, I INVITE Qantas to leave our shores;
In doing so, it can relinquish its underserved taxpayer-funded monopoly on Australian air transit and open up to more competition.
Better still, we can replace it with a fresh public airline- like what Qantas used to be (back when it was actually good and actually had a name across the world).

This is about one thing, buying up Qantas as cheap as possible then moving it on.

Have a look at the value of the Australian $ one year prior to Billiton buying BHP in 2001 and one year after. In a nutshell the dollar was around the 80's a year before and at the 80's a year after, but it hit a historical low of 49 and fifties during the month the sale went through, it has not sunk that low since.