{"id":174921,"date":"2025-02-12T14:23:32","date_gmt":"2025-02-12T04:23:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=174921"},"modified":"2025-02-12T14:23:33","modified_gmt":"2025-02-12T04:23:33","slug":"albanese-government-says-it-will-acquire-collapsed-rex-airlines-if-no-other-buyers-emerge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=174921","title":{"rendered":"Albanese government says it will acquire collapsed Rex Airlines if no other buyers emerge"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Albanese government is preparing to buy beleaguered Rex Airlines if it cannot entice private buyers to resuscitate the regional carrier\u2019s services, potentially saddling taxpayers with the company\u2019s $500 million debt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The move would make it the first Australian government to own an airline since Qantas was privatised in the 1990s, and follows the $80 million lifeline that Labor gave Rex last November to keep it operating regional flights until July 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRegional Australians deserve access to quality and crucial regional aviation services,\u201d Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a statement on Tuesday night. \u201cRegional Australians can be assured that our government will continue to fight to ensure these regional airfares remain available.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rex is a crucial service for many regional and remote Australians, operating routes that other commercial airlines don\u2019t fly, such as Parkes to Sydney in NSW, Mildura to Melbourne in Victoria, and Mount Isa to Cairns in Queensland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the airline entered administration in July 2024 following its botched attempt to expand into capital city routes during 2021. Rex and four directors are also being sued by ASIC<\/a> for misleading and deceiving investors about its profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company\u2019s administrators have revealed Rex has a $500 million debt to its 4800 creditors. The government already bought $50 million of this debt back from Rex\u2019s largest creditor in January.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the airline\u2019s woes are largely of its own making,<\/a> regional Australia\u2019s reliance on Rex makes it a politically sensitive issue coming into this year\u2019s election. The Albanese government will spruik its lifeline to Rex as evidence of its commitment to regional Australians, challenging Peter Dutton\u2019s Coalition to back its plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dutton in January said the Coalition \u201cwould be happy to support the government [in] a bipartisan way to see Rex Airlines fly again\u201d, while Nationals leader David Littleproud in November welcomed \u201canything that\u2019s going to keep Rex in the air and give confidence until it\u2019s sorted in totality\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Albanese government says it wants to help Rex\u2019s administrators secure a sale, and is negotiating with shortlisted bidders on how the Commonwealth could support them to land a successful deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It said any government support would require the potential buyer to agree to provide ongoing and reasonable levels of service to regional and remote communities, as well as provide value for money to taxpayers and demonstrate good governance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rex is a crucial service for many regional and remote Australians, operating routes that other commercial airlines don\u2019t fly, such as Parkes to Sydney in NSW, Mildura to Melbourne in Victoria, and Mount Isa to Cairns in Queensland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":174922,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[273,999,35,10345],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-174921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia","category-australia-politics","category-breaking-news","category-rexairlines","tag-transport"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=174921"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":174924,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/174921\/revisions\/174924"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/174922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=174921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=174921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=174921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}