AUSTRALIA

Country Brief: Australia

Abstract

The research paper focuses on Australia, specifically Australian Airline, Airports, Currency, Politics and Languages spoken in Australia. Brief information is shared and analyzed regarding Australian Languages, Australian flag carrier and Major International Airports, Politics and Australian Dollar.

Country Brief: Australia

Introduction

Officially known as Commonwealth of Australia, Australia is located in the Southern Hemisphere including the Australian continent mainland, Tasmania Island and various small Islands located in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Australia's neighboring countries are east Timor, Papua New Guinea (to the north), Indonesia, Vanuatu, New-Caledonia (towards the north east), the Solomon Islands and New Zealand towards south east (Powell, 1988).

Languages Spoken in Australia

The major language spoken in Australia is English since the colonization along with other numerous languages by the majority population. However, many immigrants and Aboriginal groups speak other languages than English. There were around 240 Aboriginal languages spoken in Australia, before European invasion, with different dialectics. Even today, around 20 languages are fluently spoken by native children, apart from these around 70 languages are still in use. Colonization has resulted in decline, in use of Aboriginal languages. Among Aboriginal factions, particularly in northern areas, a number of distinguishing Creole dialects combine Aboriginal tongues with English.

Around fifty thousand speakers use twelve main communal languages at homes, other than indigenous languages. Listing these according to the number of speakers, Italian is the most spoken language followed by Greek, Chinese, Serbo-Croatian, Arabic, German, Vietnamese, Spanish, Polish, Macedonian, Filipino languages, and Maltese. The most Multilingual city is Melbourne. Migrant people desire their languages to be preserved by government policies for instance the Languages-Other-Than-English (LOTE) program in secondary schools. The Australian English perhaps begin by the linkage of British regional dialects which was used by those who came to colonies and groups of convicts (Baldassar & Trigger, 2001).

National Airline

Qantas is Australia's National carrier and largest airline in Australia. It is the oldest operating airline in the world. Qantas celebrated the 90th anniversary in 2010, after 90 years of launch in 1920. Qantas slogan of “the spirit of Australia” highlights its connectivity with Australian culture. For a long time, Qantas has been considered as Australia's flag carrier and the firm has been subject to Qantas sale Act 1992 to insure that the carrier remains in the ownership of Australians. It seems that this stance will not change, not due to any financial reasons, but for the fact that sale of its ownership will cause dent to nationalism and cause public backlash. However, the government is considering removing some of the restrictions on Qantas's operations and ownership.

Qantas has two major brands, Jetstar and Qantas, which are well positioned towards two distinct target segments. The Qantas brand focuses primarily on business travel, while Jetstar focuses on holiday travel. The Qantas brand also provides long distance flights including flights between Australia and the US or the UK, routes on which passengers will hardly accept low service standards of low cost transporters and which the economies of various aircraft avert Jetstar from flying these paths, ...