After Rex’s failure, here is the answer to Australia’s airline competition problem

The failure of Rex in Australia’s aviation market is just a sideshow to the biggest issue of maintaining an effective duopoly in the Australian market. Nonetheless, it could trigger the difficult decisions that the government will finally have to make.

It might seem strange to talk about maintaining a duopoly when questions are being raised about whether there is space for three airlines in the market (which, under the right circumstances, I believe there is). But for as long as there has been commercial domestic aviation in Australia, that has been the underlying strategy governments have sought to achieve.