Given this then, wouldn't it be better for the consumer and perhaps even for the taxpayer and supposedly a cash strapped government for the ACCC to get the governments support to call ALL airlines that operate within, into and out of the country into a room, provide a plate of sandwiches and a glass of water to everyone around the table and politely inform them they have 6 months to come up with an industry code on airfare advertising that avoids the (insert list of practices the ACCC doesn't like here) or the ACCC with the support of the government will write one and get it enshrined in law.
What really irks me about Lord Sims over at the ACCC is that this situation, at least in my eyes, is in part the ACCC's making. They value a competition at the expense of all else ideology that has, in recent times according to profit results in the newspaper, led to it bordering on impossible to run an airline profitability in Australia. While businesses will come and go in a competitive environment I'm not convinced it is a good thing, or a fair thing to those businesses and the people working in them that it is difficult and bordering on impossible to run a business, in this case an airline, with the prospects of a fair return thanks to an ideological agenda implemented by a government department.
This is the same ACCC that described the airline industry as a "cosy duopoly" ... I'm no expert at reading federal government budget papers, but it would seem that "cosy duopoly" is on track to loose more money than the ACCC's annual budget, perhaps even several times over. An interesting definition of cosy.
They, at least in part, created an environment that supports this race to the lowest common denominator advertising. Their solution then is to litigate to fix it. How imaginative.
