Sad, really sad… But I fear that this one will go down with very few (if any) of the real culprits ever being brought to justice. It’s a cockup on such a grand scale that it’s a bit like the old truism that has saved the likes of Rupert Murdoch in the past.
(Now there’s a familiar name. I wonder what brought that particular name to my mind?)
The truism?
“If you owe the bank a million dollars, you’re in trouble. If you owe the bank A HUNDRED million dollars, it’s the bank that’s in trouble.”
If Andersens don’t lose all credibility over this, particularly after ENRON, it will show us all just how rotten ‘the System’ really is. But I suspect they’ll stay firmly in place charging their fat fees, for there are so many powerful people involved in this debacle with dirty washing to keep away from a public airing that little or nothing will be done. We might have a Royal Commission, but it will be very much like the Army’s Blackhawk disaster in Townsville – the chiefs will find some poor middle-level patsy or two to nail it on, and they (or their ‘mates’ <img src="wink.gif" border="0"> will walk way withn their reputations unscathed or pocketing their fat fees.
[
Back to the word ‘mates’. Why does that particular word immediately come to mind when ‘Ansett’ and ‘underhanded skullduggery’ are mentioned in the same breath?]
My commiserations to the 15,800 AN staff who’ve been led a sad and all too predictable dance these last few months. And to those A320 drivers who were shafted out of their (as it turned out, non-existent) jobs by non-rated members of the ‘Old Boyz inner circle’ since Sept 14th, perhaps you will now agree at least in part with the likes of Kaptain M when he says you have been lying down these last twelve years with some particularly vile, low-life curs. I wish you all well in ridding yourself of any fleas you may have now thought you picked up along the way.