Steele,
It wasn't the mining boom that pushed the Australian dollar that high; it was the RBA setting interest rates unnecessarily high.

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Paul1405,
Australia has the rue of law. Nationalization requires compensation!

To steelerudex,

Qantas is the national flag carrier? What a load of bloody rubbish old cock.

The Irish gnome moved all servicing offshore and god knows what else, you really have no idea, lol.

Cheers

Ross

The 90% foreign owned Virgin airline was already $5 billion in debt well before travel restrictions were imposed. Nevertheless, they have always been better to fly with than Qantas and I hope they survive for the sake of Australian staff. No taxpayer support, though.

SR,

"As of 2013, around 45 000 people were employed in automotive and parts manufacturing, with around 11 350 employed directly by the three car manufacturers, Holden, Ford and Toyota (Productivity Commission 2014)."

And all these companies were foreign owned. Virgin with 10 000 employees and 6000 in support roles is a direct analogue with the car industry.

I don't support bailing out the car industry, Virgin or Qantas. However, I don't want to see Australia left with a monopoly airline that is free to gouge local customers. I see a take over by a white knight of the assets as the best option for virgin.

Anyone remember Ansett? We all knew its Australian owner by sight. It went with barely a whimper, and Qantas ruled. What makes us think that a country of 25 million can support more than one airline, anymore than it could support car manufacturing.

ttbn,
Car manufacturing was originally a high value activity, but gradually became a low value activity.
Provision of transport services is generally still high value; for the vast majority of Virgin Australia's routes, there's no competition from low wage countries.

I can't remember who it was, but when I was at TAFE in the early '90s, I heard about an expert who thought the USA domestic market could support seven airlines. When asked about how many Australia could support, his answer (calculated by the same formula) was one! But competition required there be two. Though regulation can theoretically remove the need for competition, it's hard to see how that could work in practice.

Since then, the size of our population has grown by a third, and propensity to fly has also risen. But the importance of market size doesn't seem to be so high anyway. NZ has a much smaller population, yet still has a competitive market for air travel.