"Melbourne Age" breaking News
Fox, Lew must explain says ACTU. .February 27 2002
Unions had done all they could to help save the failed Ansett airline, and Solomon Lew and Lindsay Fox must explain why they had pulled out of negotiations to buy it, ACTU secretary Greg Combet said.
Mr Combet said today's shock decision by Mr Lew and Mr Fox, which followed late-night talks with Ansett's administrators, was a devastating blow for Ansett workers.
"The question that's got to be asked here (is) that having gone so far down this process of sale of the airline, the reasoning behind Mr Fox and Lew pulling out at this late stage," he told ABC radio in Melbourne.
"We've invested an enormous amount of time, energy and money, and so have many other parties.
"Everyone has worked extremely hard to try to pull this off.
"The airline was pretty much ready to go.
Certainly there were some issues that needed to be resolved over the next couple of days."
In a statement released at 9am (AEDT), the Fox-Lew syndicate of Tesna confirmed that the deal could not be finalised by tomorrow's midnight deadline.
They blamed issues principally related to third parties.
"Discussions have taken place with the administrators concerning options for resolving the outstanding issues and finalising the sale," the statement said.
"In the light of those discussions and in consideration of our advice, we have reluctantly reached the conclusion that the sale agreement is not capable of completion and that the process involving Tesna and the administrators cease".
Mr Combet said unions would be extremely angry at the Fox-Lew decision, but he was satisfied unions had done all they could to help the sale go through.
"We negotiated everything, productivity improvements, changes, new agreements, protected entitlements, we agreed on job numbers - we've done everything to try and make this thing work, so it's a tremendous blow," he said.
"(We) would not have done a thing differently. It was the right thing to do to set out and save the jobs in the airline and protect people's entitlements and that's what was done.
"You can only save the jobs if you find a buyer."
Mr Combet said unions would be doing their "utmost" to help employees, and would meet with administrators today.
"Obviously we've got to regroup and sit down with the administrators and figure out where we can still try and save some jobs and see what the state of play is for the employees' entitlements," he said.
"What we wanted to do is save as many jobs as we could in Ansett and we're going to have to put our nose back to the grindstone."