The whole board of Nauru Airlines has been turfed out, deepening the crisis which has engulfed the Brisbane-based carrier
The entire board of a Brisbane-based airline has been turfed, intensifying a crisis which has seen a huge exodus of staff and allegations of a corporate dysfunction over the past year.
Anthony Marx, The Courier-Mail
Subscriber only
|
September 16, 2019 7:56pm
New head of Nauru Airlines board Kieren Keke.
TURFED OUT
THE entire board of Nauru Airlines has been turfed out, deepening the crisis which has engulfed the Brisbane-based carrier.
The new government in Nauru approved a cabinet submission on Friday to revoke the appointments of embattled chairman Trevor Jensen, his vice-chairman and five other directors.
A sixth director, Gold Coast-based John Peterson, resigned with immediate effect.
A new six-member board, headed by politician Kieren Keke, a Queensland-trained medical doctor and former Foreign Affairs Ministers in Nauru, has filled the void and been tapped for four-year terms.
The dramatic overhaul (on a Friday the 13th no less!) follows the ouster a day earlier of chief operating officer Tony Middleton and chief commercial officer Richard Miller by acting CEO Geoff Bowmaker.
New head of Nauru Airlines board Kieren Keke.Not surprisingly, the sweeping reorganisation prompted an outpouring of relief from current and former employees, who allege that Jensen, Middleton and Miller presided over a deeply dysfunctional corporate culture that prompted an exodus of talent since early last year.
They have previously denied those allegations but none of them returned calls seeking comment yesterday.
“The staff reaction has been amazing. There is now a sense of optimism that had long disappeared under the three,’’ one insider told us.
FROM OUR PARTNERS
Opinions you can’t ignore. Peta Credlin 6pm weeknights on Sky News.
For more“No-one underestimates the damage that has been done but the enthusiasm is there to get the airline back on track.’’
Another staffer observed that “the general feeling throughout the company is good riddance’’.
“How do I know? Because my phone has all but melted down…once it became known the axe had fallen’’.
SPENDING AUDIT
THE arrival of a swag of new faces at loss-making Nauru Airlines is hardly the end of it.
A review panel appointed by the country’s new president, Lionel Aingimea, has launched an audit of all the spending by Jensen and other company executives.
One City Beat spy said “eye watering” amounts had been squandered on legal action by the former chairman, much of it allegedly without approval from the rest of the board or the government.
“Auditors are looking very closely at the bills to determine which should be deemed legitimate company expenses and which are personal, discretionary spending,’’ our source reports.
Nauru Airlines former chairman Trevor JensenIn just one case, huge sums were committed to determine who was posting harsh criticisms of Jensen to an online pilots chat site.
This fruitless exercise included a Brisbane law firm hiring a process server in the US in a bid to track down a web company and force it to reveal IP addresses. Depend-ing on the outcome of the investigation, Jensen may have to pay back a substantial sum to the airline and, if he refuses, legal action could ensue to force the issue.
Eyebrows have also been raised about that aforementioned Brisbane law firm, where one of the partners who was tasked with defending the airline from workplace complaints was, at the same time, dating someone who had lodged a bullying claim against it.
STILL IN LIMBO
AS this big hot mess unfolds, there are plenty of players still dangling in limbo.
Among them is former CEO Peter Sheehan, who was suspended in May.
Sheehan is in the process of launching a legal challenge to his removal and declined to comment yesterday.
Things are also likely to become pretty uncomfortable for Nauru pollie David Adeang, who previously had oversight of the airline but appears to have done little to clean it up.
TAKING POTSHOTS
MEANWHILE, critics apparently sympathetic to the old regime have taken potshots at the new chairman, Dr Keke, for lacking aviation and commercial experience.
They claim he is better versed in sports thanks to his role as head of Nauru Rugby Union and have already alleged he is pondering plans to cut the workforce and trim the flight schedule.
Also coming in for criticism is Bowmaker, who they allege “brings a number of conflicts with him’’.
He disputed this as baseless yesterday.