Yep... and breaking the golden rule of "never sell infrastructure" in the process...
But even if we ignore the bit where Qantas has to "stay Australian", I'm still failing to understand how Australia benefits from Joyce getting his way and moving (big chunks of) Qantas to South East Asia.
I understand what Joyce wants to do, and why.
I don't understand why Australian citizens and the Australian government wouldn't oppose it.
Late edit because I forgot to reply to the other part of Mike52's post (face palm):
Australian citizens benefit from Qantas staying here in the same ways they benefit from any large business being here.
The most obvious is the number of people gainfully employed, and the overall benefit that has on the rest of the economy (those employees pay tax, they spend money which helps keep other people employed, etc etc).
Similarly, the half a billion dollars in profits is taxed by the Aussie governement, meaning the government can either provide more services to me, or tax me less.
Then you get onto a stack of less tangible things, like the value of having the skills of those workers in Australia, the value of a "national airline", blah blah.
