ONCE AGAIN JOE NAILS IT, HUDSON IS HOPELESS . FREEHILLS, FINCH, GOYDER AND PROBABLY SOME OTHERS ALL NEED TO GO
Qantas moons the Senate
The airline considers itself an arm of government when it wants protectionist policy settings but a private company when any transparency is required of it.
Joe AstonColumnistOct 8, 2023 – 7.34pm
On Friday, Qantas provided answers to questions on notice asked by the Senate committee investigating the Qatar air rights affair.
Qantas has been talking a big game about dialling down the arrogance.
“I think it’s a time for humility,” chairman
Richard Goyder claimed a month ago, without specifying a start date.
Team Qantas stuck to the script at the Senate hearing. Alex Ellinghausen “We understand we need to earn your trust back not with what we say but what we do and how we behave,”
Vanessa Hudson conceded in
her recent hostage video to Qantas customers.
“My history in business has been one of high ethics,” Goyder told the Senate inquiry on September 27. “Clearly we’ve got issues now that we need to face into and deal with
Yet at the first opportunity to demonstrate a change of course, Qantas mooned the Australian parliament. The company elected to face into its customary obfuscation. The start date for humility is apparently the 2032 Brisbane Olympics.
Senator
David Pocock asked: “How many free upgrades has Qantas given over the last 12 months [and] how many of these upgrades were to politicians or public servants?
”
Qantas responded that “for privacy reasons, we are unable to disclose personal information regarding flights taken by individuals … It is up to members and senators to update their register of interests as appropriate.”
Privacy concerns
Pocock’s question didn’t even ask Qantas to identify anyone. He asked for two numbers, not anyone’s name.
This is dissembling 101. Answer a question you haven’t been asked. Reframe the question to one you couldn’t possibly respond to.
What on earth could the privacy concern be with disclosing an aggregate number? Whose privacy would that breach? Unless the answer was “in the last 12 months, Qantas has given free upgrades to 151 members of the House of Representatives and 76 senators”. That would be naming names!
Let’s not beat around the bush, here. The entire premise of the senators’ questions about
Chairman’s Lounge membership and upgrades is that they are bribes. The only way that undue influence occurs is through the auspices of humans who always have names. But in Qantas’ world, those names must be protected at all costs. They’re a matter for someone else to disclose.
So Qantas 2.0 refuses to answer a question on oath from the Senate on the basis its priority is protecting the privacy of people it may have unduly influenced.
We have the highest ethics – try a spritz of our new humility cologne! – and yes, we might have provided public officials with secret gratuities, but that’s really a matter for them to disclose in their pecuniary interest register. It’s just terrific.
Giant spreadsheet
Remember that Qantas considers itself an arm of government when it wants protectionist policy settings or free money but a private company when any transparency is required of it. Qantas is acting like a government department refusing an FOI request because the information “would substantially and unreasonably divert the resources of the (government) agency from its other operations”.
That figures, because it would be a ****load of work to name every person Qantas has slung a backhander to over the years. It would have to ground the fleet again so every employee could work on the gigantic spreadsheet of beholden persons, which would run the full length of Hangar 96.
Or perhaps general counsel (and
Patrick Bateman impersonator)
Andrew Finch could repurpose his epic own goal from the baggage handlers’ illegal sacking and create another exotic instrument of delegation devolving the entire administrative resources of Qantas beyond parliament’s reach. We have offshored anyone who could answer the question. Qantas head office is now domiciled in Gibraltar, the global capital of online casino games – where your odds are far better than on booking a Classic Reward seat or getting a refund on your flight credit.
Qantas provided these non-answers just seven business days after the hearing. So where are the answers from questions on notice at the cost-of-living inquiry, which
Alan Joyce, Jetstar CEO
Stephanie Tully and chief lobbyist
Andrew McGinnes appeared at six weeks ago? Such as this question, courtesy of Senator
Matt Canavan:
“While Anthony Albanese was transport minister between 2007 and 2013, did Qantas provide free, complimentary or discounted flights to the minister, to his family, to a member of his staff or any other person travelling with the minister?”
Unity ticket
Imagine the privacy concerns Qantas will have about that one! Goyder, Hudson and their attorney Patrick Bateman will humbly answer this question – an absolutely legitimate matter of public interest – on the day that hell freezes over.
They’ll say, “if we did provide freebies, it’s up to Albo to disclose them himself”. Except he didn’t. Maybe Albo will declare any free flights when he declares the Chairman’s Lounge memberships of his girlfriend and his son?
The Prime Minister trotted out his son on Saturday for a photo opportunity at a polling booth for the Voice referendum. Albo and Qantas often find themselves on a unity ticket and it turns out that selective privacy concerns are another thing they share.
The PM’s son is a participant in his father’s career whenever it suits his father’s political imperatives. Nathan’s all good for the nightly news grab. But when it comes to his completely unjustifiable
Chairman’s Lounge membership or his
PwC internship, then “
my son is not a public figure.” Albanese carries on as if his son’s boondoggle is a bigger secret than the nuclear codes.
In Vanessa Hudson’s mind, Qantas has changed, yet she’s still got Finch and McGinnes out the back persisting with the hyper-aggressive conduct that helped cause Qantas’ monumental breakdown in public trust. In their minds, complying with the parliament’s reasonable request is optional. A demand from the Senate to produce information, in Finch’s world, is a negotiation. “If we were to release a document to you in confidence, can we be certain that it won’t be released publicly?” he chimed in on September 27. “I’m sorry, can we be certain or can’t we be certain?”
It was unreal. I know you have confidentiality conventions of 122 years’ standing, but how confidential are they? Can we just have a little back and forth over this and then I might, but then I might not. What bargaining power did this f---wit actually think he had?
Hudson has invited us to judge her only on what she does. And what is she doing? She is backing Alan Joyce’s All-Star cast of ghouls. You’d know she was serious if Finch and McGinnes were handing out their resumes in Martin Place.
Yet in spite of what she says, she got the job because she was the continuity candidate and she is now complicit in keeping these people and enabling them as they chuck an enormous brown eye at the Australian public.
Vanessa is right that it only matters what she does. It’s early days, but the signs are terrible. She looks so weak, and the people around her are making it thus.