Qantas has pulled a series of inflight advertisements made by a mining union and promoting Australian jobs in the mining sector, explaining it doesn't run "political" ads.
The Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union ads argue that the benefits of the mining boom are unevenly spread, and that many Australians have tried and failed to get work in the mines – despite repeated complaints by mining companies of a skills shortage.
The ads, which were screened regularly on Sky News, were scheduled to be shown on Qantas flights this week, for seven days.
But Qantas spokesman Luke Enright said the ads, which had run for a day on domestic flights across Australia, had been taken off-the-air.
Advertisement
"It ran for a day and then we had it pulled off the next day," he said. "It wasn't censoring a union ad – we don't allow any political ads."
Qantas pulls union's mining ads
Could I be forgiven for thinking that Qantas pulled the ads because:
1. It owns a subsidiary that has lucrative fly in fy out mining contracts.
2. It no doubt has corporate accounts with many mining companies.
3. The Qantas Board and management hates unions with a passion, unless they are of the corrupt lickspittle type like the AWU.
4. Qantas hates all Australian workers and wishes to replace them with cheap foreign labor just like the mining companies?