Those that hold hope that the attacks on Qantas by Gillard / Albanese and Shorten in parliament question time over the last three days mark a sea change in government sentiment towards this dispute should read the above SMH article carefully.
Remember that Joyce and the board are currently being advised by Bain & Co and Freehills Lawyers - they are experts engineering industrial relations disputes so that the outcome always falls in the employers favour.
There is no question that the reaction of the government to the grounding would have been factored into the plan. They are on the glide path perfectly in my view
On other matters, there have been a number of very disturbing incidents within Qantas flight operations over the last few days. By this I mean the behaviour of certain member of flight ops management towards line pilots.
For those QF pilots in the process of seeking new jobs, it might be a good idea to disguise the identity of your new employer if possible. I believe that it is well within the realm of possibility that we may see a repeat of the "political dissidents" episode that dogged some of the guys in Europe post 1989.
The company has gone to extraordinary lengths to ensure that mainline pilots do not have other employment opportunities elsewhere in the Qantas group.
Despite being significantly short of crew, only a handful of QF guys have been able to transfer to JQD, JQI, JQA and JQP. Whilst I have heard the arguments about 'pollution' before, the reality is that the endgame is now well in process, and Qantas (if it had any brains) would be facilitating the process for guys and girls to leave mainline without paying redundancies as much as possible.
The reality is opposite. The only conclusion I can come to is that Clifford and Joyce not only want to run Qantas pilots out of the company, but they want to inflict maximum personal and financial damage on each individual pilot in the process.
We all need to be aware of this and proceed accordingly.