The reginal debate has been done to death. In hindsight all those that claimed AIR were really creaming it on their some of their regional routes with their Beechcraft 1900 19 seater aircraft were made to look like idiots when AIR stopped using those aircraft and admitted they were losing over $1m a month operating them !
I think they're doing fine with their ATR aircraft but Jetstar have been allowed to come in and cream the most profitable routes without providing a comprehensive network coverage like AIR does. If there were such incredible super profits from providing a widespread national service covering most of the major regional towns and cities then the obvious question of why hasn't Jetstar expanded springs readily to mind.