THERE are few issues that rile Tamworth residents more than the exorbitant price of airline tickets.
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Affordable air travel is the oxygen of thriving regional centres, opening up economies and making towns and cities more attractive to prospective residents.
That our city is being deprived of that oxygen is as obvious as a jumbo jet on a two-lane highway.
The Tamworth to Sydney leg is a money printing licence for QantasLink, one of the most profitable legs in its vast network.
Independent candidate for Tamworth Peter Draper is bang-on when he says the Qantas monopoly should be a local election issue.
While debate flares over the impact on power bills of the government’s mooted poles and wires sell-off, there’s no such debate around the impact on prices of the Tamworth airline monopoly.
During Rex’s failed bid to strike a deal on security charges with council to service the route last year, it claimed a second carrier would virtually halve ticket prices overnight.
Such a price shift would have profound benefits for business and leisure flyers.
But much like the Coles and Woolies stranglehold on the supermarket sector, the question remains how best to prise open competition.
If a smaller carrier took on Qantas in Tamworth, it would spark a price war that only one party could win.
But where the free market fails, legislators must step in.
It should be the role of governments to break up monopolies that price-gouge the public.
The state government, always so ready to bang the decentralisation drum, must back it up with action on an issue that affects so many regional residents.
Subsidising the cost of security screening at regional airports for smaller airlines, at least for a honeymoon period, would be a start.
It shouldn’t be left to ratepayers to carry the can.
Unless the government incentivises the route for a second carrier, Tamworth flyers will forever be caught in a real-life game of Monopoly.