I am not at that office today (and won't be again until Wednesday) so I can't investigate the details of the printout until then. I know the printout wasn't from a Qantas e-mail - it was an internal document with the details so I suspect that the airfares are the actual ones to be paid as I think the document would be used for billing purposes within the department as well.l try and confirm this on Wednesday.
Even assuming the airfares were pre-discount surely the discount wouldn't be 50% - I would be interested if anyone has any details on what the discount rates for government actually are?
Personally I think the fares paid are indicative of several problems within the travel arrangements the government has. Namely:
1. Using Qantas Travel as a travel provider is clearly inappropriate as they will always have a preference for ticketing with QF. All travel providers used by government should be independant from any airline. You wouldn't select a Holden Dealership as your preferred car supplier and expect them to sell you a Ford would you? In fact why use a travel provider at all - why not just have the travel clerks in the department book directly over the Internet?
From what I have heard of the telephone conversations between the travel clerks in the department and the Q travel people (obviously I only ever hear the clerk side of the conversation) they will often only look at Virgin/Rex if specifically requested. Conversations such as:
Clerk: He needs to fly back on Friday after 3PM
QT: ????
Clerk: So 2:30 is available but then nothing until 7pm?
QT: ???
Clerk: What about Rex?
QT: ???
Clerk: Put him on the 3:30 Rex flight then.
Now to me this convesation implies that QT is not even looking at anything other then QF flights unless specifically requested
2. Ridulous over-use of business class travel in this particular department (or section of the department). Some of those Sydney-Canberra flights on that printout were booked as Business Class. I have worked for quite a few private-sector organisations and in the private sector the policy is generally economy class for flights less than 3 or 4 hours - even for senior executives. How can anyone justify paying double or triple the fare to fly Business on a 40 minute flight?
3. ALL fares seem to be booked as fully-flexible/refundable even when this is not required. Again in that sample I had the flights were being arranged for interstate people to travel to Canberra for a specific meeting. The timings for these meetings are "set in stone" - they are NEVER changed so why book flexible airfares for the attendees? Occassionally there may be a cancellation for one person due to illness, etc, but it would be far cheaper to book non-flexible airfares and accept the loss on those occassional cancellations - it would be more than compensated for by the reduced fares.
My point in all of this is that Rex and Virgin have a valid argument - our taxes are being wasted by the government preference for booking with QF (at least in the department I am in). Now maybe some people think that is OK. Maybe some people think a public servant NEEDS to have business class comfort on his/her 40 minute flight and you are OK with them spending an extra WEEKS worth of your tax money on that single flight. Maybe it is OK for them to spend a few hundred dollars extra so that the PS doesn't have to pay $8 for his in-flight snack (although why not give them $8 extra travel allowance instead) and can earn those FF points. Is that money well spent????