Deputy Opposition Leader Sussan Ley says it is “not fair” for country Australians to be “left hanging” over the Rex Airlines debacle.
Rex Airlines has grounded its fleet of Boeing737 aircraft and entered into voluntary administration but will continue to service select regional routes using its Saab 340 fleet.
“Let’s see what develops, but we’re watching this closely,” she said during a media conference.
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The last time I flew Rex, I was quite impressed how much they improved. It would be a shame to see them go under .
What is not fair is regional Australians suffering because numerically they are massively overwhelmed by city voters in all elections, meaning city people who have no clue about regional life elect Governments that also have no clue about regional life.
Seems very hypocritical that Elmer Fudd denies assistance to Rex Airlines when he went out of his way to assist Qantas twice if my memory serves me well – but could this have anything to do with Qantas being a supporter of Elmer's Voice campaign and being a very woke organisation when it comes to Labor policies. If Rex can somehow survive please support them over Qantas when you have need to fly.
Yes Sussan, the Coalition has a lot of unfairness to answer for. From The Financial Review 1 September 2020:
"You might recall that as part of the Commonwealth’s COVID-19 support package for the aviation industry, McCormack had a special $100 million fund available to all regional carriers except QantasLink and Virgin Australia Regional Airlines, which between them operate merely 85 per cent of Australia’s regional seat capacity.
Under this exceptionally dubious scheme, Rex received $53.9 million in untied, free cash – not repayable, and not linked to any required flying. This was an extraordinary amount of money for Rex, whose total annual revenue is only $321.8 million. The equivalent would be giving – not lending – $1.2 billion to Virgin and $3.8 billion to Qantas. By the way, Rex is foreign owned.
And when asked why the government was letting Virgin collapse without even recourse to a Commonwealth loan, McCormack spluttered that “we can’t just pick and select individuals and winners out of this”. Except he could, and he did.
It has hardly gone unnoticed that McCormack, the federal leader of the Nationals, awarded this grant to Rex, whose deputy chairman John Sharp is a longstanding Nationals party official. As we’ve observed previously, the audacity of the cronyism almost eclipses the cronyism itself.
Rex also received $40.4 million under the $198 million Regional Airline Network Support program. This program also excludes Qantas and Virgin, despite their accounting for 85 per cent of regional flying. And scrambling to defend the indefensible, McCormack and Rex both falsely claimed that Qantas and Virgin are eligible for funding under this scheme.
One thing’s for sure, without that $53.9 million of McCormack’s free money, Rex’s FY20 loss of $19.4 million would’ve been a whole lot uglier. Instead, the company's Singaporean owners are in a position to acquire new jets and launch flights between capital cities. Witness policymaking at its most grievous. You can always bank on the Nationals for that". Joe Aston
Lying cow.