Paul,

Don't get ahead of yourself. The debt guarantee is not a done deal, and is contingent upon Qantas clearing the decks, cost cutting, and returning the company to profitability.

If I were Abbott, I would tie the debt guarantee to the repeal of the Qantas sales act and wedge Labor.

Government debt guarantee for Qantas? Forget it!
What next, a debt guarantee for SPCA, Ford, Holden or Toyota? (Or, even for any genuinely-fully-Aussie-owned enterprise?)

Or, paying full wages/salary for 12 months (or more) for anyone retrenched from company x, y, or z?

Let's slap the other cheek. My benevolence has limits, and I would expect no less from MY (or your) government(s).

The horse has bolted, and it's up to Qantas to reign in its deficits - or else go the way of the Dodo.
(Talk about vision? Privatised a solid going concern (Telstra); but hangs on to a controlling interest in the Flying Kangaroo; sentiment before good common business sense?)

Paul you know Iam closer to you than SM in politics.
But he has us here.
You, half the country, seem surprised at the radical actions of the Abbott Government.
It has always been so, not this far right but always right.
Do not defend Labor, and not when they are wrong.
My party is better than that.
In time, even if driven by Abbott,s Royal Commission, we will see our own faults,will reform.
And in doing so move even further away from the old stagnant ALP you fondly remind me of.
Yesterday a left wing ex ALP Minister, brother to a former CFMEU state Secretary, spoke of a reality we all must confront.
A job is better than having the best enterprise agreement an out of work person ever had.
No not starvation wages but time and again bush workers have taken a wage cut to keep the doors open and them or their mates in a job

Honestly Belly, the Labor structure must be full of gunners.

Gunna do this and gunna do that. They have had years, decades, to reform but chose not to. Most would be complicit in the scandal, or they were deliberately doubling up their blindfolds not to see. They thought the party would go on forever. -The play on words was deliberate.

I don't know why Labor supporters would try to shield the ABC from the review, accountability and the belt-tightening that apply to everyone else.

I don't know that the ABC is always that kind to Labor either. Not traditional Labor anyhow. To me it consistently runs the political 'Progressive' agenda. That is the inevitable outcome, a self-fulfilling prophesy, and group think if you like, from the re-jigged 'positive' affirmative action and multicultural recruitment and promotion policies that have applied to public sector agencies for yonks.

It is hard to imagine that the workers that Labor claims to represent would prefer to have over-paid ABC presenters and redundant management structures instead of better roads, hospitals and so on. That lazy billion dollars that goes into running the ABC could do a loot of good out there for common folk.

Last sentence should be 'lot' not 'loot'.

ABC is a whipping boy, that term came in to common use because the Kings of England as Children had one!
That is a Child who was wiped for the young Kings sins!
Because we must never hit the King.
Well if we,all of us, took our sun glasses off and looked at our rather grubby King Rupert the first,we would see he is foul.
And if we had the courage to look at his machine of war,his news papers world wide, but reaching a new low in Australia.
We would see a true bias, true wish to dictate to us all, King Rupert needed a whipping buy his choice? Australia's only believable mews out let.