Hmmm! the email you refer to was intended to be private correspondence between myself and some AIPA committee members, the AIPA executive director to whom it was addressed and lawyers also making submissions to the Inquiry, but now that it’s been made public without my consent, and you’ve publically asked, I’ll try to help you out.
I wrote the email above on behalf of some confused AIPA members, (I.e. those who knew I had filed a Federal Court Claim on behalf of all AIPA Members seeking to have the QSA upheld in 2007), but now wanting clarification of their Associations recent written advice to them that:
· only the Minister can make and application to the Court for (QSA) injunctions
To be clear, AIPA made no express statement in its Senate submission. However AIPA’s submission does support without qualification the fundamental Inquiry premise that QSA 92: ‘currently only allows an application to the Court for injunctions by the Minister.
The consequence of their association not clarifying the initial oversight made by whoever drafted the Bill’s terms of reference, is that the Senators conducting the hearing would, if not informed otherwise, probably accept that only the relevant Minister can seek injunctions and subsequently would probably support a recommendation:
· to allow for applications to the Court by 100 shareholder members or shareholder members who hold at least 5 percent of the shares in Qantas.
Regretfully, the situation as it stood was materially misleading, and could if it remained uncorrected, extinguish existing rights all shareholders currently have to seek enforcement of QSA obligations arising out of Qantas’ compliance with its Articles of Association and Australian Corporations Law.
For your information, I phoned the executive director on the Monday before the Senate hearing to apprise him of the situation, but I guess he was flat out, as he did not return my call. So I followed him up with the email you refer to.
At the end of the day, the issue raised in the email was not set straight by the Association at the Senate hearing on the Friday as requested. Nonetheless, the situation has now been clarified.
I trust this satisfies your inquiry. If you are a Qantas pilot, contact me privately if you would like further information, as I would prefer not to discuss publically, a private matter.
Kind Regards
Ian Woods