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Speaker 1: Now the Commers Commission, the Commas Commission, has said it

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Speaker 1: will not conduct a market study into domestic air travel.

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Speaker 1: This is of course been a topic of conversation a

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Speaker 1: lot lately the price of air New Zealand tickets. There

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Speaker 1: have been calls for a study and so doctor John Small,

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Speaker 1: the chair of the Commers Commission, has pinned in an

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Speaker 1: opinion piece on this today and he's with us. Now,

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Speaker 1: Hey John, Hey, good assening, Heather, John. So take it

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Speaker 1: from your opinion piece that basically the reasons that you're

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Speaker 1: not going to intervene is number one, it's expensive to

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Speaker 1: fly a plane. Number two, it's even more expensive to

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Speaker 1: fly a plane on regional routes. So nobody wants to

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Speaker 1: compete in number three in the parts where it really matters,

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Speaker 1: like the big the big jet flights, they've got competition.

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Speaker 1: Is that about right?

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Speaker 2: That's a reasonable summary year. But also I think you know,

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Speaker 2: at the moment competition on the main trunk lines is

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Speaker 2: a bit hand put by by the fact that their

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Speaker 2: intet's got a bunch of planes that are out of service.

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Speaker 2: But yeah, generally speaking, that's right. It's very expensive to

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Speaker 2: fly to fly regional routes that are quite sure and

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Speaker 2: don't have a lot of demand on them.

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Speaker 1: Okay, So the allegation that's been laid at the feed

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Speaker 1: of a New Zealand at the moment is basically that

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Speaker 1: it's jacking up its prices on those big on the

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Speaker 1: domestic routes in order to make more money. Is that fair?

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Speaker 1: Are they allowed to do that?

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Speaker 2: Well, there's there's no law against charging high prices. That's

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Speaker 2: that's the reality of things in New Zealand. If it's

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Speaker 2: a monopoly on a monopoly route, it's potentially able to

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Speaker 2: be regulated, but that would require quite a bit of

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Speaker 2: investigation to make sure that you weren't you weren't overreaching

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Speaker 2: to do that. And that's not really that's not really

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Speaker 2: a competition issue. That's a regulatory issue. So from the

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Speaker 2: point of view competition, you know, we're not we're not

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Speaker 2: particularly happy with what we see. We're keep still still

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Speaker 2: keeping a really close eye on it. But there's nothing

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Speaker 2: that we saw that's kind of warrant effort that would

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Speaker 2: go into a market study to I mean, we've already

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Speaker 2: found out a few things that are going to be

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Speaker 2: helpful and so yeah, our viewers that will keep a

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Speaker 2: close eye on it and see how it develops.

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Speaker 1: Wouldn't do in New Zealand have a monopoly on most

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Speaker 1: of the regional routes.

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Speaker 2: Well, there's some regional routes that don't fly, and that's

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Speaker 2: part of the issue that people have been complaining about

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Speaker 2: them with drawing services on routes that are and you

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Speaker 2: have to assume that those routes are unprofitable otherwise that

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Speaker 2: still be there. But yeah, I mean that's so there's

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Speaker 2: some routes where there are a monopolists. There's some routes

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Speaker 2: where smaller airlines are a monopoly, and there's been plenty

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Speaker 2: of I mean, there's a reason I'm out of coverage

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Speaker 2: about particular smaller airlines. Even when they're flying monopoly routes,

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Speaker 2: they're really struggling.

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Speaker 1: So on the monopoly routes, is there a case to

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Speaker 1: be made for regulation there?

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Speaker 2: Potentially, But that's a different matter to a market study,

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Speaker 2: which is a competition issue. So as I say, we're

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Speaker 2: still looking at this. We talked to the airport's pretty

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Speaker 2: pretty soon to get some more information from them. It's

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Speaker 2: not a there's not a once and for all things.

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Speaker 2: This is where we are at the moment.

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Speaker 1: Why did you decide to write this. What made you

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Speaker 1: write the editorial?

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Speaker 2: We thought it'd be a good idea. Well, we did

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Speaker 2: the work first of all, because we are always looking

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Speaker 2: for ways to improve competition, and market studies are at

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Speaker 2: all for that. So I thought, okay, that seems like

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Speaker 2: this a bit of an issue here, let's have a

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Speaker 2: good look. So we've got a really cracked team together

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Speaker 2: for about a month or so and had a good

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Speaker 2: look at it, and then we thought, well, let's put

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Speaker 2: it out there so people know what we.

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Speaker 1: Found and were you feeling Were you feeling like you

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Speaker 1: were being criticized for not doing it? It felt like

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Speaker 1: you had to come to your own destroy fens of it.

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Speaker 2: No, no, not at all. No. But I mean we're

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Speaker 2: allowed to initiate market studies on our own volition or

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Speaker 2: the government can tell us to so they could still

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Speaker 2: tell us if they wanted to so, but we're always

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Speaker 2: looking for ways to improve competition. So that's the reason

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Speaker 2: we looked at that, And having looked at that, thought

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Speaker 2: might as we tell people, John, it's.

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Speaker 1: Good to talk to you, thank you for your time.

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Speaker 1: I really appreciate it. That's doctor John Small, the chairperson

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Speaker 1: of the Commerce commissioning. For more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive,

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Speaker 1: Listen live to news talks.

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Speaker 2: It'd be from four pm weekdays, or follow the podcast

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