Lindsay Fox and Solly Lew have secured a great deal and some great publicity for themselves but questions should still be asked about the political stunt that was pulled yesterday.

Why do you announce a sale 37 hours before the polls open when you won’t even begin negotiations with both sets of governments until next week?

When we walked in unionists wearing “AWU says lets get Ansett flying” tee-shirts were handing out flyers bagging the Howard government and the place was teeming with about 30 journos.

Given that the TWU did a dirt cheap closed shop deal with Virgin Blue, it might be the case that Bill Shorten’s AWU are hoping to return the favour with the Lew-Fox boys.

The 4.30pm press conference finally kicked off at 4.55pm and people like Shadow Treasurer Simon Crean, Victorian Treasurer John Brumby and ACTU Secretary Greg Combet didn’t even get a seat at the main table.

Watchers of The 7.30 Report would remember that Lindsay Fox attended Crean’s campaign launch a few weeks back and that Crean’s former chief of staff worked for Lew and Fox on their PR during the Yannon aftermath.

Fox is also great mates with former ACTU secretary Bill Kelty and both Fox and Lew are chummy with Paul Keating so the Labor mateships are just oozing in this deal. Afterall, Keating appointed Lew to the Reserve Bank board and then Howard and Costello refused to reappoint him so Solly will be enjoying making the lads squirm on election eve.

There was not a Liberal to be seen anywhere yesterday and John Anderson was immediately downplaying the deal when interviewed an hour later.

The main table was reserved for the two Marks (Korda and Mentha) from Arthur Andersen, Lindsay Fox in a shocking brown jumper, Solly Lew in a suit and Steve Bracks at the other end.

The Marks opened the batting claiming the deal was worth $3.6 billion but this is a load of bollocks that was swallowed by tabloids like the Herald Sun which devoted today’s entire front page to their conditional deal.

$2.5 billion of this $3.6 billion is the value of the 29 new A330 Airbus aircraft that will be leased and delivered at 3 a month for the new next two years before going back to the original airlines who have deferred delivery.

This gives diddly squat to the administrator to pay creditors or worker entitlements, but Labor have already committed $195 million of federal funds to this cause and the pressure is now really on Howard and Costello to match this.

However, Lindsay and Solly claim they are giving a $1.1 billion benefit to the administrator but there is no breakdown of the three categories that this comprises:

* cash to the administrators (estimated by some at $300m)

* a capital injection into the new airline (estimated by some at $400m)

* assumption of liabilities of 4000 workers (estimated at about $200m).

But you should know that Lindsay and Solly get to pick up all the prize assets including the Melbourne head office building (that has a helipad that will save the Melbourne High oval from Lindsay’s chopper), use of some aircraft as required and the leases and valuable slots over terminals in major airports across Australia.

They won’t be taking on any of the inefficient maintenance workshops or 12,000 of the 16,000 workers.

And the workers that do switch over will have to be a lot more productive. Big Lindsay says he is 90 per cent towards concluding negotiations with the unions that will be a “middle of the ground” deal, presumably between Qantas and Virgin Blue. Those cosy Ansett industrial agreements are long gone.

The boys have until January 31 to get their deal finalised and Lindsay was really talking up its prospects of getting back to the 55 per cent market share Ansett had just 7 short years ago. However, he’ll need a lot more planes. Afterall, the administrator is still to get rid of 100 planes and the boys are only planning to buy 29 new planes.

Solly was keen to talk up all the gadgets that the new planes will bring including internet access, TV screens and telephones for passengers. Presumably this is business class we’re talking about.

Solly said falling US interest rates were “music to our ears” and it is true that new aircraft have never been this cheap.

After all the public floggings that both men got during the Yannon scandal at Coles Myer a few years back, the boys must have really enjoyed all the hero-worshipping going on yesterday. Premier Steve Bracks called them “two good Victorians” are encouraged a round of applause – one of about six for the press conference which concluded with the two Marks thanking the press “for looking after us” and raising one final round of applause for the journalists . How bizarre.

The fact of the matter is that Solly is one of the most tight-fisted businessmen around and he would not be doing this unless he thought there were serious dollars to be made.

Afterall, the whole Yannon thing exploded because as executive chairman of Coles Myer he refused to pay about $1.5 million to sacked finance director Philip Bowman. He rued that mistake for years and was rarely seen in public but not he’s opted for one of the highest profile business rescues in Australian history.

Then again, the bloke who really bollocked Solly loudly over Yannon was Rupert Murdoch so there would be some sweet revenge for the lads if they can make Rupert’s airline work properly again

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