Regarding the BB email.
My first full time job after finishing University was as the plant engineer for the Spotswood oil terminal in Melbourne, then owned by Esso (Now Exxon).
Some Twelve months into my employment, I, and other executives, were called to attend a half day presentation on business ethics, given by a Vice President of the corporation, from New York, no less. He was travelling the world giving this presentation to all Esso executives as part of an American Court settlement which was the result of Esso being caught by the American Government engaging in bribery and corruption from memory in South America.
The essence of his presentation was that Esso would henceforth only adhere to the highest standards of ethical behaviour, period. All laws were to be adhered to in thought word and deed. Business ethics were paramount, and the company was henceforth to be a model corporate citizen.
To this end, each branch of the company was to create an ethics committee composed of senior managers.
With metaphorical hand on heart he told us ;"If any of you ever believe that something you may be doing, or observe others are doing, might possibly be unethical, or against the spirit of our strict code of obedience to law and our code of ethics, I want all of you to promise to report the matter to the Committee."
Some three months later, young Sunfish found out exactly what was happening to the oily, greasy and foul interceptor trap waste he was paying $100 per drum to a contractor to be disposed of.
Something like $25 was going to the man on the gate at the local municipal tip. Another $25 was going to the bulldozer operator to dig a big pit in the landfill. When no one was looking, the truck was driven into the pit, the drums unloaded and the pit quickly filled in.
Sunfish, in his wisdom and with the words of the New York Vice President ringing in his ears, decided to report this obvious breach of business ethics to the Victorian operations manager of the day, one Bill Douglas (aka "The angry ant").
The result, to put it mildly, was not what I expected. There was no pat on the back, nothing was done. There was no EPA in those days either. Instead I was "frozen out" and life was made increasingly uncomfortable - not a team player. Being young and not very sure of myself, I let the matter rest. In the next Six months I realised that Essos concerns for safety were mere lip service, and I was set up as the fall guy if anything should go wrong in my bailiwick. I left and joined Ansett.
The Longford gas plant disaster vindicated everything I believed about Esso and their attitude to safety.
Reading the Email reproduced above, I think I could be forgiven for developing exactly the same feeling about the Jetstar safety culture as I developed about Esso's, right down to the punitive threat that anyone not reporting safety concerns (they won't if they know what's good for them) will be breaking the law.
Readers should note that after the Longford gas plant explosion and fire, Esso immediately blamed the incinerated plant operators for "not following procedures". It took a royal commission to discover that Esso had a toxic corporate safety culture that was exactly the reverse of its officially stated position, and vindicate the operators who had had to endure years of cost cutting and pressure for more production from the company that was the real cause of the accident.
The Jetstar email with its implied threat of "breaking the law" suggests to me that if there is a fatigue related incident at Jetstar, they will adopt the Esso defence - "We gave instructions that fatigue was to be reported!". Of course the pilots will not be there to defend themselves.