Ugly nationalism in support for Qantas bailout

03 March 2014

The Federal Government is correct in its determination to be unsentimental in its attitude to financial assistance for Qantas. At the time of writing, it appears to have discarded earlier ideas of assisting the struggling airline by means of a debt guarantee. Instead it is pushing for Senate support to level the playing field through an amendment to the 1992 Qantas Sale Act to allow substantial foreign ownership.

The level playing field is certainly the only way to go if we cannot articulate and justify why we need a national carrier. So far Labor's attempt to do this has been quite fatuous, with shadow transport spokesperson Anthony Albanese focusing on the idea of Qantas planes in the sky being an advertisement for Australian tourism. His leader Bill Shorten has simply criticised the Government for the loss of 5000 jobs and made the facile suggestion that 'we would be the bunnies if we just waved goodbye to an Australian icon'.

It's time that defenders of the need for a national carrier produced substantial arguments to counter the growing acceptance that its time has passed.

The idea of a national (or 'flag') carrier is a legacy of the time when governments took the lead in establishing airlines to serve their populations because the high capital cost of doing this was not attractive to business. Now we have large overseas carriers such as Emirates that are much better equipped to take the financial risk and provide affordable air travel because of their economies of scale. They can provide comfortable and efficient international flights to Australia, and offer extensive domestic services through their equity in Virgin Australia.

It is also important to disentangle talk of a national carrier serving the national interest from the often ugly phenomenon of nationalism. Underlying mention of Qantas as an 'Australian icon' could be the sentiment associated with the 1990s resurgence of nationalism and its racist undertones.

We had Pauline Hanson's warning that Australia was 'in danger of being swamped by Asians'. A few years later there was John Howard's 'Fortress Australia' response to refugee arrivals and his popular vow that 'we will decide who comes into this country and the circumstances in which they come'. Now both sides of politics talk about nationalism in terms of sovereignty and border protection.

We can possibly interpret the results of an Essential Media poll released last Monday as an indication that the large number of Australians who

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Ugly nationalism in support for Qantas bailout

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