Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
I assume you are referring to Qantas here.
Qantas employs about 30,000 people. American taxpayers would be more concerned about the livelihood of the workers who were idled, and likely uninterested in precisely who owned the airline.
If Qantas goes belly up, other carriers will fill the void once normal travel resumes, but don't assume all of the former Qantas employees will be rehired by the new entrants. Jobs that must be done locally may get filled that way (though likely not at the rate they had been paid by Qantas.) Jobs that can be done elsewhere will be done where it's cheapest. That is unlikely to be Oz.
Implying that current Qantas employees should just go hang because you don't like who owns their employer is a non-starter, and there is no way to force the foreign owners to cough up. They aren't in Australia, aren't subject to Australian law, and can simply walk away from a bad investment.
You may not like the idea of a bailout, but I suspect you're stuck with it. 
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Dennis |
False assumption - Virgin Australia.
They are in receivership. They've been in deep doo-doos for at least a year, they may even have been trading (a paltry 9.1% of the stock is listed on the ASX) whilst insolvent, which is unlawful.
VA workers are receiving government covid19 disaster relief payments like everyone else who has lost their job or been furloughed. The receiver will eventually pay them a generous proportion (typically 60-100%) of their outstanding entitlements (accumulated annual leave, long service leave, redundancy pay etc). Under our insolvency laws employees are second cab off the payment rank, after the taxman.
Qantas has been severely impacted of course, but its owners have not begged publicly for a bailout, like Branson has on UK TV! Qantas is majority Australian owned and its furloughed workers are getting the same support as Virgin workers - although their entitlements are intact.
My question stands - would Americans want to bail out an airline that is more than 90% owned offshore. Including by foreign state owned entities; states that hold trillions of US government debt? That last condition doesn't apply so much to us, your banks own most of our government debt, and your airlines don't hold any Virgin Australia stock
Qantas and VA are the only major airlines operating on trunk routes, so if VA goes under then Qantas will have carte-blanche on that market. In which case I would hope the government will do what it should have done decades ago - open the skies to allow reputable international airlines to service the major trunks routes, and subsidise the smaller airlines that service regional Australia.
Branson has also begged the UK government to bail-out Virgin Atlantic, but it's majority UK owned, so they probably will.
Billionaires are not much liked in Australia, especially of the gonged British kind. Even Aussie Mining billionaires that secure and donate a years supply of covid-19 tests, reagents, and equipment to the state health departments are sneered at. And a decidedly left-leaning Aussie IT billionaire who urged people to install the government's contact capture app on their phones has been castigated as a traitor. We have a centre-right federal government.
Stay safe.
BR