Qantas’ grand theft klepto

Joe AstonColumnistAug 29, 2023 – 7.15pm
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Monday was a red-letter day for the Qantas-Labor national governing coalition, with federal ministers yet again melting into puddles as they attempted to justify the Joyce-Albanese government’s decision to block Qatar Airways from launching 28 new flights per week into Australia.
Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones was stoned on truth serum when he told reporters that Qantas – whose international division has been charging customers 52 per cent more by flying 28 per cent less than pre-COVID – is receiving sovereign protection on its Europe and UK routes to avoid “design(ing) our markets in a way which will make it unsustainable for the existing Australian-based carrier.”

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce at the Senate committee hearing. Screenshot Catherine King, the Minister for Qantas, then held her own doorstop and chided, “Well, I wouldn’t have used the same words that Stephen did.”
It was a little rich of King to be huffy. She’s already provided four different reasons of her own for rejecting Qatar’s application, none of which made any more sense than this one.
“When you say you wouldn’t have used those words,” one journalist pressed, “has [Jones] got the wrong end of the stick? Do you disagree with what he said?
“No, no, I think that you should read his full transcript – his transcript in full,” King said.
It’s a pity Jones’ office declined to release a transcript (as it does for every other interview) and referred all questions on the matter back to King’s office!
Then came the main event, Alan Joyce’s first testimony under oath in nearly a decade. And what a performance it was.
Joyce is a data bomber and a black belt ninja of self-removal. When directed to his specific actions and their consequences, he zooms out to spout macro-waffle, droning like an auctioneer, snowing his questioners in a blizzard of selective numbers and irrelevant positives.
Joyce answers the questions he wishes he was asked, or answers previous questions instead of the one at hand. The more personal the question, the more impersonal the response. The more concrete the question, the more abstract the rejoinder. The more simple and verifiable the question, the more complex and unprovable the riposte.
He’s a fatigue negotiator. He talks around everything. “Let me address your question by reframing it. Forget this, you’ve got to understand that.” Every confronting truth is recast as a digestible ego fantasy. He’ll keep repeating his rehearsed assertions no matter how many times they’re proven to be false.
Joyce told 7:30 on Thursday that “when the company does badly, I don’t get paid, so the three years of COVID is an example, no bonuses were paid.” Yet on Monday, Joyce admitted in evidence that this month, he is finally being paid one million Qantas shares (worth $6 million) as his long-term bonus for the years 2020, 2021 and 2022, over which Qantas posted total losses of $6.3 billion.
Senator Bridget McKenzie put it to him that, “In actual fact, you’ve just been able to defer [your long-term] bonus until it’s able to be realised… you actually set aside your bonuses, so you can take them later.”
Joyce responded, “That’s not true senator!” , before setting off on a nonsensical ramble about his base salary and his short-term bonus. He inhales reality distortion like the rest of us do oxygen.
You can’t converse with Joyce because he’s never really in a conversation. He’s talking to himself. He’s so detached, so insulated, from normal social reciprocity that it’s virtually impossible for anyone to engage him meaningfully.
Openly contemptuous of Joyce and highly attuned to his bulldozing, the senators did a mighty job of interrupting his implacable cognitive firewall. When you’ve got Jane Hume and Tony Sheldon on a unity ticket against you, you know things are bad.
Would you take 90 minutes of nationally televised ridicule from half a dozen senators in return for $24 million a year? Any day of the week! The hourly rate of pay for the indignity is positively sensational.
Joyce and his two courtiers were also on a unity ticket; a unity ticket to obfuscate. His courtiers even aped their emperor’s delusion.
“There’s been no lack of transparency there,” claimed Andrew McGinnes, the most over-promoted PR weasel in corporate Australia, before the trio spent more than five minutes feigning an inability to provide the remaining total balance of COVID travel credits owing to Qantas and Jetstar customers.
Sheldon had to wrench the secret Jetstar balance – of “around $100 million” – out of Jetstar CEO Steph Tully like wisdom teeth. She’ll be in the deep freezer with Joyce for weeks for that careless moment of honesty.
There’s also more than $50 million – though McGinnes won’t say exactly how much – owing to Qantas customers outside Australia.
Joyce has been saying since Thursday that the balance is $370 million, and he’s now forced to admit that, actually, it’s more than $520 million. Hey, you got me! If this isn’t the most untrustworthy company in Australia, name me a worse one.
Tully added that “about 50 per cent of that [$100 million of Jetstar credits] is held by people and it’s less than $100 [per person] so you can imagine the context of contacting those customers to use that amount.” She almost flapped her hand as if to say: “Let them eat cake.”
Hang on a moment. At the same hearing, Alan Joyce pontificated (again) about “the democratisation of air travel”, which he says he personally ushered in as the first CEO of Jetstar. Joycey’s a dead set ripper bloke because he’s delivered “200 million airfares under $100.”
Think about the logical incoherence here. As supporting data for his self-mythologising, $100 really matters. It’ll buy you a terrific holiday, all thanks to Alan.
Yet when he owes a customer $100 it’s not even worth following up. It’s certainly not worth disclosing. He democratised airfares but he’s sure as hell not going to democratise refunds!
What Tully has also admitted here is that Jetstar owes money to at least500,000 Australians. This is a mass theft event.
“Our absolute goal is that there’s zero credit left by the end of December,” she said.
How about the rampant insincerity of saying we want the balance at zero but we can’t tell you what the balance is. We’ll provide that answer on notice in three weeks’ time, and then there’ll only be 104 days left until we get to trouser that balance as profit. $520 million of expired credits would add 40 per cent to the company’s next half-year profit in February. A proper bonanza.
“We’ve taken out full-page ads reminding people how to claim a credit or refund … so there is absolutely a lot of effort going on,” McGinnes whined.
Did you see that Qantas ad – “Introducing the new Find My Credit tool” – at half-time during the Matildas’ World Cup semi-final? Of course you didn’t.
Instead, you endured the dire Qantas commercial where some 25-year-old gets his siblings to pool $15,000 for a Business Class ticket home from Tokyo (on a 21-year-old A330 held together with duct tape) so the little twerp can haunt his mum’s birthday party. Who else identifies?
Let’s be real here. Qantas is making a noisy show of trying to reunite people with their money, but that’s all it is – a performance. If Qantas was really trying, the remaining balance would be declining at a far greater rate than the current $15 million a month.
The balance is depleting so slowly because you cannot call up and get a refund in three minutes. In most cases, you’ll be told you can’t get a refund, that you can only use the credit to book a flight, which is now double the price you paid originally. You’ll even be told Qantas will charge you a $99 processing fee to book it.
That’s your scenario if you’re a Platinum Frequent Flyer calling Qantas. If you’re Cheryl from Dapto calling Jetstar, don’t even bother.
To this day, Qantas is making it as difficult as they possibly can. A kleptomaniac at scale, a class action waiting to happen. That’s the Spirit of Australia.