Jetstar can be 2 hours delayed but I can’t be 10 minutes late?

Just venting out my frustration here. My partner was booked to fly this morning in from Avalon to Sydney. As you may know, Avalon is very quiet, not much going on. My partners flight was at 6am. He doesn’t have any checked in luggage, would just need to check in fly through security and get on board.

I’ll admit (And he does too), he could have gotten there much earlier but he arrived to the airport at 5:39. It takes less than 10 minutes to pass through and get on board. When he gets to the front, he is informed that the flight has left because everyone else was there early.

In my mind, if you set a departure time (6am), you leave at that intended time. and of course he had to pay $180 just to get on the next one at 10am. Him and I are pretty frequent flyers because of our long distance relationship and there have been COUNTLESS times of delays, some being 2 hour delays but Jetstar can’t wait a couple of minutes?

Just frustrating and even after trying to seek compensation, their stupid bot immediately rejected it. I don’t know, am I crazy for thinking that this isn’t fair at all? I went through their delays and cancellations policies and of course it doesn’t cover anything about whether they intend to leave early, just delays.