The story of Australian business is so often the story of monopolies or oligopolies wielding political influence to protect their interests, or fighting with each other over a few points of market share.
At Capital Brief, we think there is a different story to tell — one of entrepreneurs developing new products, building new businesses, attacking global markets and competing on the world stage. But the oligopoly story has been impossible to ignore over the past few days, and for justifiable reasons.
Consider the following quote from a piece we published this morning: "In Australia, in particular, we have a very dominant incumbent provider, who has a lot of historical and current advantages and is able to do things that aren't possible in other industries or markets".
That is Optus CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin, in her first big interview since last year's cyberattack, talking about Telstra. But Virgin CEO Jayne Hrdlicka would no doubt sympathise.
Virgin today waded into the controversy surrounding Qantas' record $2.5 billion profit, or more accurately the claim by Qantas CEO Alan Joyce at last week's results announcement that letting Qatar Airways to add more flights into Australia would "distort" the market.
