They had 12 x 380s 2 were scrapped but they decided to late that they wanted to fly them. 8 are flying and yes 2 are waiting for maintenance.Rear Window
Richard Goyder calls off search for Qantas’ black box
Joe AstonColumnistSep 24, 2023 – 7.30pm
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New Qantas chief executive
Vanessa Hudson released a hostage video on Friday morning, admitting to customers that “I know that we have let you down in many ways and for that I am sorry. We haven’t delivered the way we should have and we’ve often been hard to deal with … We understand we need to earn your trust back not with what we say but what we do and how we behave.”
The only thing missing was a stirring soundtrack – perhaps a cutaway shot of the Qantas board in Napisan-white tunics singing in falsetto at the summit of a dusty gorge. As crisis management productions go, it’s a deep fake.
Qantas chief executive Vanessa Hudson. Edwina Pickles Chief among the manifold issues with Hudson’s fresh, remorseful vibe was that in the same 24-hour period, her chairman,
Richard Goyder, broadcast his own alternative script, designed not to win back customers but to defend his appalling record – the one Hudson was, er, apologising for.
“In terms of decisions made at the time and appropriate governance oversight, I think compared to almost any airline in the world Qantas has done a pretty good job,” Goyder told ABC Radio on Thursday. “I’d certainly reject the notion that [this] is a rolling crisis.” Crisis? What crisis?! Goyder is now channelling
Leslie Nielsen in
The Naked Gun, insisting “Nothing to see here, please disperse!”
“The one thing I think we would have done differently … would have been to be more modest in our ambitions as borders opened up,” Goyder continued. “I think, in hindsight, we tried to come out of the COVID lockdowns too rapidly, and that was probably a combination of us wanting to get [our] people back to work [and] us wanting to get our customers to places that they hadn’t been able to get to as borders reopened.”
This is a variation on the classic job interview humblebrag, “My biggest weakness is that I try too hard.” Goyder is seriously claiming that Qantas’ principal error of the past 18 months was being too altruistic, too community minded! He isn’t just
floating above the rest of us now, he’s occupying an alternative world.
Reopening too ambitiously, that’s really the one thing he’d do differently?! Not attempting to steal $500 million from customers via irredeemable COVID-19 travel credits then dissembling about it? Not handing young
Nathan Albanese a membership to the Chairman’s Lounge or unduly influencing Australian governments? Not letting
Alan Joyce sell 90 per cent of his Qantas shares for no good reason? Certainly not sacking 1700 people unlawfully!
“We regret the impact that it had on the 1700 people,” Goyder conceded, but smartly added: “The courts actually held that we had sound commercial reasons for making that decision.”
A farcical construction
Don’t you love it when Uncle Rich wears his brain on the outside? We’re sorry about the human consequences of our illegal conduct, but we had sound commercial reasons for breaking the law. What is he talking about?! The only sound commercial reason for doing something illegal is that you consider illegality and its consequences to be just another cost of doing business. That’s the rotten culture and mindset Goyder has presided over.
Qantas lost in the first instance, lost on first appeal then lost unanimously in the High Court, all after the company’s longstanding industrial relations adviser,
Ian Oldmeadow, had warned that the mass compulsory redundancies (while in receipt of JobKeeper) was a manoeuvre fraught with risk.
An army of Freehills lawyers prepared for the sackings, designing an exotic
legal instrument of delegation to synthetically erase Joyce from the decision and shield him from its repercussions. It was a farcical construction, antithetical to everything Qantas claims to require in “ethical decision-making”.
Goyder is unable to imagine a world in which Qantas could’ve had its cake and eaten it too, where it returned employees to work, provided its customers with a safe and reliable service without trying to steal from them, didn’t improperly capture policymakers and still generated strong returns for its shareholders.
Richard’s been having his cake and simultaneously guzzling on it for his entire corporate career. An ethical organisation can do exactly the same. That’s the bit he still can’t seem to comprehend.
‘I’m getting straight to work’
Goyder claims that unnamed Qantas shareholders “are very supportive of the work we’re doing now … and certainly of me. The latest read I’ve got on that is that people want me to continue to do the role.” He said: “While I retain that confidence, I’ll get to work and do the things we need to do.”
The latest read he’s got! We think he means the latest hot take.
He speaks like a new arrival. “I’m getting straight to work!” What’s Goyder been doing for the past five years? Certainly not the necessary work of proper oversight. He dismissed every single warning about the company’s direction and culture under Joyce, defiantly endorsing him as “
the best CEO in Australia by the length of a straight”.
Hudson says, quite correctly, that the task of reputational repair hinges not on what Qantas says but what it does. And what is the single thing Goyder has done, besides reading aloud from his scroll of pathetic excuses?
He docked Joyce’s $24 million pay in 2023 by a grand total of $437,000, or 1.8 per cent of his actual remuneration outcome. That is the extent of his penalty for leaving Qantas in a nosedive – barely a new dunny in his Rocks penthouse. Joyce might also lose his $2.1 million short-term bonus, which has been deferred, but we seriously doubt it. Would you really count on Richard Goyder doing that to Alan Joyce?
Why act differently now?
Goyder claimed grandly that $8.3 million of Joyce’s 2023 pay “is subject to clawback should the board determine that necessary”, but let’s be real here. Clawback is only triggered by “serious misconduct, breach of obligations to the [company] or material misstatements in Qantas’ financial statements”. None of what has occurred will meet those definitions, especially because Qantas will inevitably settle with the ACCC over its 8000 ghost flights on a no admission basis.
The Qantas board has already declined to claw back any of Joyce’s shares over the High Court’s finding of illegality, or for exposing shareholders to hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties and compensation. So why would anyone believe the board will act any differently in the future over the ACCC matter?
Goyder is making an enormous show of penalising Joyce while actually paying him almost his maximum entitlements, pushed back to July 1 next year. Pending us forgetting. Pending this silly kerfuffle blowing over. No one’s buying it.
He is ignoring the repeated public expressions of disquiet from the largest cohort of his shareholder base, the industry superannuation and public sector funds that control more than 20 per cent of Qantas shares. Uncle Rich will be thinking he can just sling the cranky investors a couple of grand final tickets, or maybe a Chairman’s Lounge membership. It’s never not worked before!
Goyder retains the confidence of shareholders and the board just like every AFL coach does right before they’re sacked. Who are all of these supportive investors and where are they hiding? Not one Qantas shareholder has spoken out in support of Goyder, to align themselves with his bizarre remoteness from the company’s self-injuries or to endorse the recent governance of the company.
Humility has its limits
Goyder and Hudson will face a public Senate hearing on Wednesday in Canberra. Goyder may be able to explain docking $550,000 and withholding $2.1 million of Alan Joyce’s $24 million pay packet to proxy advisers and investment managers but good luck selling that to a panel of plain-speaking politicians highly attuned to their constituents’ visceral loathing of Qantas.
Then, Monday, October 2, is Goyder’s own Mad Monday. He’s invited Qantas shareholders to meet him at JPMorgan’s Melbourne office at 101 Collins Street, like he’s a visiting Hollywood A-lister. Book an audience with the great man!
A public company chairman – let alone one bleeding out in the last chance saloon – would always call on his institutional investors at their own offices. Humility, like satire, has its limits.
In the airline industry, every accident is dissected. The “black box”, an Australian invention, records a multitude of flight data and everything that’s said in the cockpit so everyone can understand what’s gone wrong, correct equipment errors and learn from human mistakes.
Hudson prefers talking about the crash in euphemistic terms. She’s saying “We were a bit tough to deal with, we had a few delays” but she certainly isn’t saying “We flagrantly broke the law and we tried to steal half a billion dollars from you”.
Her chairman, meanwhile, doesn’t even think there’s been an accident. He’s a tailspin of justifications – we reopened too fast, we tried too hard, we had sound commercial reasons, we did a pretty good job. But I’m humble, can’t you see? Try my ravishing
humility cologne!
His jarring denialism stands between Hudson and her customer reset. She won’t get clear air as long as Goyder’s still sitting in the cabin gaslighting the passengers, blowing his fumes of delusion up and down the aisle.
Don’t open the black box! Let’s lock it in a Faraday cage and park it in the Mojave Desert, deep in the aircraft boneyard. Let’s cover it in Richard’s magic invisibility cloak! Goyder wants shareholders to believe he wasn’t there whereas shareholders just want him to disappear