Michael West's analysis is on the money. I hope that his hypothesis leads to a thorough investigation.
There is a bigger picture here. Over the past 15 years it is stated that Joyce has taken $125m in remuneration out of Qantas. This is more than the combined remuneration of most of the airline CEO's is Asia. I have done a quick tally and worked out it is more than the CEO's of SQ, MH, TG, CX, CI, KA, JL and NH. By the metrics afforded Joyce, he was running an airline that was better than the combined total of all those airlines I have just listed. In that time he has turned what was TAA into a sub-par domestic carrier with a small international footprint. QF carries less than 15% of the traffic into and out of the country.
In reality, he has left behind a fleet of aged aircraft attached to a FF program, a lot of smoke and more than a few mirrors.
How did this happen? Stupidity of the board and the Australian political class.
Is Qantas the national carrier? No, it is not. It is likely owned more than 50% by foreign interests given the large nominee shareholding.
Why is the Australian public and it's government left to lament the fact that Joyce's business strategy has always been to socialise any losses and privatise all the gains? Because we are all stupid is the only logical conclusion. If that is not true then why did the Australian Government not take a 25%-30% equity stake in the business in exchange for the $2.7bn of taxpayer funds pumped into QF during COVID. Many governments took equity for the bailouts. If the Australian Government had done similar then we could probably still call QF the national carrier.
I wish Ms Hudson no ill but she sure has gleefully taken carriage of a ticking bomb.