Keeping QANTAS Australian

"I still call Australia Home" Source: Flickr

The flying red Kangaroo on the back of an aircraft has signalled the iconic Australian brand of QANTAS for decades. It is seen as a patriotic institution; the airline that takes our athletes off to the Olympic games and the airline that "still calls Australia home". Though there is something to be said about the cost of keeping that iconic national image. Australian financial support (and management) of the airline isn't making it competitive and something needs to change.

The reason behind QANTAS' turbulent troubles is complex. A high Aussie dollar, more international and domestic competition, high fuel prices, Australian wage conditions, questionable management and foreign ownership restrictions all come into the mix. So what are the options?

1. Government Assistance. Bailouts, government assisting with debt, buying a stake in the airline; the list goes on. It's an easy option to sell to the public but it is not a long term solution. The government should only intervene in exceptional circumstances. If the airline can't keep afloat (or have a sustainable business model) without government assistance for 'tough times', it will never be a business that is self sufficient. Every time businesses claim they are experiencing 'tough times' I question when they were not experiencing tough times. Being in business is always tough. Get used to it. Business is a dog eat dog world.

2. Changing foreign ownership laws. It doesn't really matter if the airline is mostly owned by a foreign corporation. If the government changes the QANTAS Act so that it requires the airline to still be Australian (ie, employ Australian workers, have flights within Australia) the airline will still be Australian. Vegemite is owned by American giant Kraft, though we still cling to Vegemite as being the iconic Aussie spread. This is the most favoured option, but if the government is seen to be selling off the Red Kangaroo, it could result in some voter backlash.

3. Do nothing. Some call it 'minimal government', I call it lazy government. The QANTAS Act imposes  heavy regulation on a large Australian business. If that business is cutting 1000 + jobs, the government needs to pay attention and provide some assistance, or heavily justify why it should do nothing.

4. Assist the newly unemployed. If you don't care about the business itself (a risky thing to do!) care about the newly unemployed QANTAS workers. Help find them employment in new industries. Business become lazy with handouts. Tied handouts to the unemployed can act as a great incentive to encourage them into new fields of work. However, it isn't a long term solution if more jobs are to go in the future.

More options than these 4 do exist, though by our calculations, they're the most probably. It will be interesting to see in the coming weeks what actions the Government and QANTAS take to stabilise the QANTAS business model.

Links:
Tony Abbott cool on handouts for Qantas - SMH
Can Qantas fly without strings? - The Age
Tony Abbott says ditching Qantas Sale Act restriction on foreign ownership not 'unreasonable' - ABC Online

Change is in the air

Some of you may have noticed the a-political-opinion.com website has been down as of this month. Unfortunately, we're moving back to the traditional .blogspot.com domain name for now and are going through the expected complications of fiddling with anything that is technical. 

But we promise you readers something more. a political opinion will be back soon with a different style. More to come soon. 

Optional preferential voting is required for Australia

Example Australian Senate ticket: Source AEC

The Abbott government has been sworn, but the buzz from the 2013 Election campaign is far from over. The almost universal outrage at the way in which minor and micro parties have been able to sneak into Senate poses an ongoing problem; does Australia require electoral reform. In short, Yes.
There is nothing inherently wrong with minor or micro parties holding power within the Senate. This blog is an advocate for more representation from independents and minor parties in Parliament. Though what is highly objectionable, is the idea that unwanted and (mostly) disliked parties and politicians getting into power where there was clearly no preference for them.

Optional preferential voting needs to be the new solution for Australia, for all State and Federal elections. With compulsory voting required in Australia (or at least attendance at a polling booth), the ability for citizens to fully utilise their political right to participate in an election needs to occur. When someone goes to vote, before they even mark their ballot papers, they have two options. To vote or not to vote/cast an informal vote that will not count. Seems simple, but it gets a little more complicated later on. Many people cast informal ballots at the election such as voting for only one candidate or writing obscenities for the electoral officials to laugh over later. They validly decide that they don't want to place any candidate in power. This is a legitimate political choice. For voters who vote this way, they reject the current offer of political candidates. But what about citizens who want to only vote for 1 or just a few candidates, but not others? In a two candidate election it is simple, they preference one candidate above another. Throw in more candidates and the voter will probably find other candidates they would preference above their least preferred candidate. But an elections and voting shouldn't come down to ordering your least preferred candidates. You should be able to reject candidates outright if you have no preference at all for them to be in Parliament.

Many senate tickets run over 50 candidates, so if you're voting below the line, you can sometimes have a difficult time working out who your least preferred candidate is. In the House of Representatives, there is a different problem. In an electorate where it is unlikely that no minor party or independent will get a majority, as is the case with most electorates in Australia, you still have to choose between either of the Liberal or Labor candidates to vote for. If you wish to protest vote so they do not receive your vote, you forgo the opportunity to vote for your most preferred candidate.

What happens if no party manages to get a majority?
Then you re-hold the election. This may seem like an unfortunate consequence and an inconvenience, but when the inconvenience is having a minor party is only 0.02% of the primary vote having the balance of power, sending a state or an electorate back to the polls is nothing too sinister.

So where should this rule apply? It should apply to all House of Representatives and Senate ballots. House of Representative ballots are typically small. We could safely assume that people would give some preference options, especially if they want their vote to fully count (and not have to go back to the polls). But it prevents them from having to give a preference to a candidate they have no desire to elect to Parliament. As for the Senate ticket, you may still have above and below the line optional voting. If parties want to engage in preference deals they may. Though it also allows them to decide which parties they would not want to be in power with. This way, parties won't have to choose between the Motoring Enthusiast Party and Sports party. It also enables more below the line votes to occur. The main reason people don't vote below the line is not because they don't know how to count (even up into the hundreds), but because they can't be bothered distributing their preferences across so many parties they don't care about. 

Electoral reform in Australia needs to occur. Or the issues we identified as problems within the 2013 election, will just reoccur again and again.