iscover
Issue 103: December 1994
A Good Idea But For All The Wrong Reasons
Laurie Brereton has done it again. For what must be the fifth or sixth time in as many months he has set yet another large group of people into a tailspin over a dramatic and totally unexpected change in government policy. The latest foray into the world of rubber politics (at press time at least) was the renouncing of part of the once much fabled One Nation statement of February 1992 regarding Air New Zealand’s access to Australia’s domestic route structure from November 1 this year. The 1992 statement allowed Australia’s and New Zealand’s airlines to benefit by a more open trans-Tasman air transport market so as to free up trade and tourism under the guise of CER. Unfortunately somewhere along the line fact got well and truly left behind theory. As outlined in our October Reece, the only carrier to even acknowledge some benefit of the One Nation statement is Air New Zealand. Qantas sadly doesn’t seem to be capable anymore of doing anything original and appears more and more to believe the entire world revolves around just three cities – LA, London and Tokyo. Ansett for its part has also ignored the vast opportunities available to it if it would only bite the bullet and begin operating trans-Tasman with 150 seat class aircraft linking the numerous ports that could well be the traffic generators of tomorrow.
Least appear to make the situation more of a topic of discussion. Similarly, the Kiwi carrier threw away a golden opportunity to put its money where its mouth was that very same month as Compass II floundered. As stated ad nauseam in AA previously, ANZ could have picked up a major interest in what was otherwise an excellent airline for probably around $40m and today could have been sitting pretty with strong growth and a dozen strong fleet of jets serving the major money making routes of Australia. Whilst to us it still seems short sighted that they didn’t pursue either of these options at that time (when they were handed to them on a plate at fire sale prices) the latest intent of our Government is to literally force Air New Zealand to buy into Ansett whether they want to or not. Keating and Brereton may be able to play games with ANL and Qantas but they haven’t seemed to have figured out that they don’t own either Ansett or ANZ and neither airline is impressed with their treatment as mere pawns in this arrogant political sham. Air New Zealand is a highly profitable airline, as is the modern post-recession Ansett. Also profitable, indeed very profitable nowadays is News Ltd which has really been hoping to cash in its 50% share of Ansett for some years now though this has in recent times been taken off the front burner as the airline has returned to the black side of the ledger.
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