Joyce ‘retires’ early 👍
All good points. So it’s a safe bet that the Parliament won’t be passing a law, any time soon, prohibiting Members, Senators and public officials from accepting any of this kind of largesse from anyone.
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More likely it would be made compulsory. As we know, one of the few times we see unanimity on the House floor is a vote on increasing members' benefits.
Last edited by MickG0105; 30th Sep 2023 at 02:46. Reason: Added content to save additional post
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And as for snouts in the trough, you have described the QANTAS board perfectly. Goyder has his in a few.
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Purely a hypothetical question; What would happen if Joyce announces that he will not return to Australia?
Like SOPS said in post 389!
Like SOPS said in post 389!
Unless amongst all the closet searching, they find that he’s committed a real crime. Then it would depend on any extradition treaty we have with Ireland.
The $20 million Penthouse overlooking the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge will become the best pilot commuter joint and PARTY central for every pilot in Australia ? 
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What would happen if Joyce announces that he will not return to Australia?
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The most important conditions are:
- You are charged with an offence that is punishable by imprisonment in Ireland and in the other country for at least a year. Or, you are convicted of such an offence, and a sentence of at least four months has been imposed. This principle, that the offence must be the same in the two countries is known as the principle of dual criminality. You may not be extradited if you are going to be held in custody for the purpose of investigation.
- The offence is not a political offence: or one connected with a political offence. The definition of political offence was initially quite wide but has now been narrowed considerably. In general, it does not include terrorist type offences.
Ridiculous ! I’m offended on Patrick’s behalf. His skin care regime is legendary. Bateman wouldn’t look that ghoulish at age ninety. Finch looks like Max Schecks Nosferatu after a big night on the powder. With a similar amount of veracity.
Other than that little quibble; I found Joe Aston's article to be spot on.
If Hudson was truly going to change things instead of been Joyce in drag she would terminate both Freehills and Finch.
The maximum penalty the Parliament can impose on a person for, for example, a failure to comply with an order to appear, is only 6 months' prison. It might also be characterised as a 'political' offence for extradition purposes. So Mr Joyce (AC) would have to be charged with some other offence with a penalty of at least 12 months' imprisonment, in order to be prone to extradition.
C'mon Lead, you know nothing of the sort will happen.
I was merely making an observation about what would have to happen, not the probabilities of it happening.
Discrepancy back in the media pushing for a board seat.
I’ll never forget when he sided publicly with Joyce in 2011, front page of the Australian with his harbourfront property. As a 380 Captain he had the gall to tell his colleagues their work practices were outdated. Presumably thought he had a shot at Chief Pilot with his hero status and media profile.
Dude, do us all a favour. Retire gracefully and just disappear. Please.
I’ll never forget when he sided publicly with Joyce in 2011, front page of the Australian with his harbourfront property. As a 380 Captain he had the gall to tell his colleagues their work practices were outdated. Presumably thought he had a shot at Chief Pilot with his hero status and media profile.
HERO pilot Richard de Crespigny has broken ranks with his Qantas colleagues by calling for an end to "legacy practices" and declaring the airline's future lies in Asia.
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Analysis / Business
MICHAEL SAINSBURY
OCT 02, 2023
1
Give this article
QANTAS CEO VANESSA HUDSON (IMAGE: AAP/LUKAS COCH)Preparing to strike this week, Perth-based Qantas pilots employed at its Network Aviation (NA) subsidiary have accused the company of intimidation, bullying and harassment as management threatened to withhold backpay as the two sides tussle over a long-overdue pay deal.
The claim comes as Qantas, in an attempt to cover NA flights, is upending its schedules on the east coast during the school holidays by cancelling flights and shifting aircraft to Western Australia. The WA subsidiary covers both the crucial mining sector in the state, transporting fly-in-fly-out (FIFO) workers, as well as a growing roster of commercial flights from Perth to regional destinations and Darwin.
Qantas management has targeted the pilots with communications over the past two weekends. The first was hand-delivered by courier; the second was sent by email. Couriers delivering the initial missive, a copy of which has been seen by Crikey, were required to take photos of their delivery and the families of some pilots ended up in these photos.
The letter stated: “Importantly, the backpay to October 2022 is only available if the proposed agreement is voted up and approved. If the proposed agreement is not voted up the company would have to reconsider its position. This could mean all items currently agreed could be withdrawn … We may also need to consider options available under the Fair Work Act, including application for an intractable bargaining declaration”.
Qantas’ hardline attitude to staff has been underscored recently by the High Court’s determination that the airline illegally sacked 1,700 workers.
Last week the main union representing NA pilots, the Australian Federation of Air Pilots (AFAP), advised Qantas of the pilots’ looming strike on Wednesday, October 4 — the first strike for Qantas pilots since 1966. The decision for industrial action was made after an overwhelming 99.5% of its members, who represent 85% of pilots at NA, voted in favour. The shrinking rump are represented by the Transport Workers’ Union and The Australian and International Pilots Association (AIPA), which are the main unions for Qantas mainline.
In response to the planned industrial action, Qantas said that, as of this morning, it has cancelled 50% of the 50 or so daily flights flown by NA. In response to questions from Crikey, the airline said in a statement last night that it has “finalised contingency plans … to the planned industrial action”.
“This includes redeploying Qantas 737 jets for intra-WA flying, utilising aircraft from other charter operators and moving some flights to other days. Where there are seats available, we’re also moving customers on to other airlines to minimise disruption to school holiday travel,” the company said. That will likely be cold comfort to those affected by the cancellations in the east coast schedule. For each 737 that is brought to Perth, between two and six flights will be cancelled.
AFAP senior industrial officer Chris Aikens told Crikey, “It is disappointing that Qantas management is not working on resolving this issue to avoid any industrial action for Western Australia’s travelling public. Instead of providing a reasonable offer to WA-based pilots that could potentially have suspended the stop-work action, the company appears to be putting its energy into trying to take B737 pilots away from eastern state passenger services to fly the lucrative charter contracts for the mining companies.”
“These B737 pilots are paid around 40% more than the network pilots who would have normally flown these charter and passenger flights around regional WA. This just reinforces the current inequitable situation where Network [Aviation] pilots’ pay and conditions are so much worse than their peers’ for essentially doing the same work. The Network pilots are simply asking for something that is affordable and sustainable for the company and its workforce.”
The decision by Qantas chief executive Vanessa Hudson to partly “break” the NA strike by using Qantas mainline pilots appears to fly in the face of her recent apologies by way of videos to staff and customers, as well as an unconvincing appearance before a Senate inquiry last week with her chair Richard Goyder, now universally described as “embattled”.
She is also forcing mainline pilots to be strike-breakers, as they will otherwise risk breaking their own contracts, pilots said.
“We know that post-COVID we haven’t always delivered to what our customers expect but we are listening and we hear what they are saying,” Hudson said
.
Still, amid disruptions the NA strike has on the mining sector, one can only imagine the pressure that Goyder has had from fellow West Australians Andrew Forrest and Gina Rinehart, as well as executives from BHP, Rio Tinto and other miners.
And here lies the exquisite dilemma that Hudson finds herself in only a month into the job: look after the company’s core corporate clientele or try and deliver on recent promises to improve things for regular punters. In today’s Australia, the corporations always win.
Customers are unlikely to be heartened by Qantas’ claim that customers who won’t be able to travel “on Wednesday because of the work stoppages” will be contacted to “discuss alternative travel options” and that they can “request a full refund if they no longer wish to fly”.
Pilots from two other Qantas subsidiaries, Sunstate and Eastern Australia Airlines, are also negotiating with Qantas management over a new pay deal and have voted in favour of protected industrial action. But as yet, no decisions have yet been made.
NA chief operating officer Trevor Worgan claimed that the proposed agreement “offers our pilots significant pay rises and more guaranteed days off each roster period and we’re disappointed the AFAP has chosen to move towards industrial action while we have been trying to negotiate”.
The problem is that, in reality, it does not. At the core of the dispute is an enterprise agreement that expired on October 31, 2020, four years after it was signed in 2016. So NA pilots have not seen a pay increase in almost four years, a delay that has seen many fall below award rates of pay.
Pilots at NA and Qantas’ other regional subsidiaries have long complained of being treated as third-class workers, after those working for Qantas mainline and Jetstar.
“Network Aviation is the backbone of Qantas operations in Western Australia, it is a very successful and highly profitable part of the Qantas group,” another pilot said.
“During COVID, Network Aviation continued to operate and actually expanded due to FIFO in Western Australia booming,” the pilot continued. “This more than doubled the flying time, but cost-cutting management did not double the pilot numbers, choosing to just work existing staff harder. The pilots earn 40% less than Qantas for doing an identical job. They also have significantly less benefits.”
Pilots who will fly Qantas 737s to cover some of the strike-affected NA schedule will receive almost double the salary of pilots flying similar A320 aircraft operated by NA.
Meanwhile, the threadbare state of Qantas’ maintenance and its lack of any backup aircraft for its long-haul routes continues to be exposed with a string of flight cancellations and delays pummeling passengers flying offshore during the school holidays.
For example, on September 23 Qantas cancelled two out of its three daily flights from Los Angeles to Australia. One of these was due to a sick pilot who could not be replaced because “no one will pick up the phone anymore”, according to an international pilot. This past weekend, Qantas QF1 to Singapore and London — an A380 — was delayed by 24 hours, as it had some air conditioning system work that needed to be done.
“As normal, no parts, no people and poor management,” an engineer explained
‘Bullied and harassed’: Qantas pilots accuse management of intimidation over pay
Working harder for less money, pilots at Qantas' Perth-based subsidiary have long complained of being treated as third-class workers.MICHAEL SAINSBURY
OCT 02, 2023
1
Give this article
QANTAS CEO VANESSA HUDSON (IMAGE: AAP/LUKAS COCH)Preparing to strike this week, Perth-based Qantas pilots employed at its Network Aviation (NA) subsidiary have accused the company of intimidation, bullying and harassment as management threatened to withhold backpay as the two sides tussle over a long-overdue pay deal.The claim comes as Qantas, in an attempt to cover NA flights, is upending its schedules on the east coast during the school holidays by cancelling flights and shifting aircraft to Western Australia. The WA subsidiary covers both the crucial mining sector in the state, transporting fly-in-fly-out (FIFO) workers, as well as a growing roster of commercial flights from Perth to regional destinations and Darwin.
Qantas management has targeted the pilots with communications over the past two weekends. The first was hand-delivered by courier; the second was sent by email. Couriers delivering the initial missive, a copy of which has been seen by Crikey, were required to take photos of their delivery and the families of some pilots ended up in these photos.
Qantas pilots eye first strike in 57 years as top brass filibusters Senate committee
Read More“I felt intimidated, threatened, bullied and harassed — and so did my colleagues,” one NA pilot told Crikey. ”What sort of company treats its people like this — especially after promising a new way of operating?”The letter stated: “Importantly, the backpay to October 2022 is only available if the proposed agreement is voted up and approved. If the proposed agreement is not voted up the company would have to reconsider its position. This could mean all items currently agreed could be withdrawn … We may also need to consider options available under the Fair Work Act, including application for an intractable bargaining declaration”.
Qantas’ hardline attitude to staff has been underscored recently by the High Court’s determination that the airline illegally sacked 1,700 workers.
Last week the main union representing NA pilots, the Australian Federation of Air Pilots (AFAP), advised Qantas of the pilots’ looming strike on Wednesday, October 4 — the first strike for Qantas pilots since 1966. The decision for industrial action was made after an overwhelming 99.5% of its members, who represent 85% of pilots at NA, voted in favour. The shrinking rump are represented by the Transport Workers’ Union and The Australian and International Pilots Association (AIPA), which are the main unions for Qantas mainline.
In response to the planned industrial action, Qantas said that, as of this morning, it has cancelled 50% of the 50 or so daily flights flown by NA. In response to questions from Crikey, the airline said in a statement last night that it has “finalised contingency plans … to the planned industrial action”.
“This includes redeploying Qantas 737 jets for intra-WA flying, utilising aircraft from other charter operators and moving some flights to other days. Where there are seats available, we’re also moving customers on to other airlines to minimise disruption to school holiday travel,” the company said. That will likely be cold comfort to those affected by the cancellations in the east coast schedule. For each 737 that is brought to Perth, between two and six flights will be cancelled.
AFAP senior industrial officer Chris Aikens told Crikey, “It is disappointing that Qantas management is not working on resolving this issue to avoid any industrial action for Western Australia’s travelling public. Instead of providing a reasonable offer to WA-based pilots that could potentially have suspended the stop-work action, the company appears to be putting its energy into trying to take B737 pilots away from eastern state passenger services to fly the lucrative charter contracts for the mining companies.”
“These B737 pilots are paid around 40% more than the network pilots who would have normally flown these charter and passenger flights around regional WA. This just reinforces the current inequitable situation where Network [Aviation] pilots’ pay and conditions are so much worse than their peers’ for essentially doing the same work. The Network pilots are simply asking for something that is affordable and sustainable for the company and its workforce.”
The decision by Qantas chief executive Vanessa Hudson to partly “break” the NA strike by using Qantas mainline pilots appears to fly in the face of her recent apologies by way of videos to staff and customers, as well as an unconvincing appearance before a Senate inquiry last week with her chair Richard Goyder, now universally described as “embattled”.
She is also forcing mainline pilots to be strike-breakers, as they will otherwise risk breaking their own contracts, pilots said.
“We know that post-COVID we haven’t always delivered to what our customers expect but we are listening and we hear what they are saying,” Hudson said
‘Workers put through hell’: Qantas loses High Court appeal over sacking of 1,700 staff
Read More“As a company, our job is to get the balance right between looking after our customers, you our people and the business itself. Right now achieving this balance must first start with our customers and that’s what we’ll be focused on with our management team.”Still, amid disruptions the NA strike has on the mining sector, one can only imagine the pressure that Goyder has had from fellow West Australians Andrew Forrest and Gina Rinehart, as well as executives from BHP, Rio Tinto and other miners.
And here lies the exquisite dilemma that Hudson finds herself in only a month into the job: look after the company’s core corporate clientele or try and deliver on recent promises to improve things for regular punters. In today’s Australia, the corporations always win.
Customers are unlikely to be heartened by Qantas’ claim that customers who won’t be able to travel “on Wednesday because of the work stoppages” will be contacted to “discuss alternative travel options” and that they can “request a full refund if they no longer wish to fly”.
Pilots from two other Qantas subsidiaries, Sunstate and Eastern Australia Airlines, are also negotiating with Qantas management over a new pay deal and have voted in favour of protected industrial action. But as yet, no decisions have yet been made.
NA chief operating officer Trevor Worgan claimed that the proposed agreement “offers our pilots significant pay rises and more guaranteed days off each roster period and we’re disappointed the AFAP has chosen to move towards industrial action while we have been trying to negotiate”.
The problem is that, in reality, it does not. At the core of the dispute is an enterprise agreement that expired on October 31, 2020, four years after it was signed in 2016. So NA pilots have not seen a pay increase in almost four years, a delay that has seen many fall below award rates of pay.
Pilots at NA and Qantas’ other regional subsidiaries have long complained of being treated as third-class workers, after those working for Qantas mainline and Jetstar.
“Network Aviation is the backbone of Qantas operations in Western Australia, it is a very successful and highly profitable part of the Qantas group,” another pilot said.
‘All skeleton’: Can Qantas’ new CEO salvage an airline amid the wreckage?
Read MoreWhat used to be a small charter operator at Perth Airport has grown to cover all the regional ports in Western Australia and has replaced Qantas mainline services offering the same service at a significantly lower price. The aircraft are painted red and look the same as Qantas, but the pilots, cabin crew, engineers and ground staff earn significantly less than their Qantas counterparts for doing the same job — and work harder for less money.“During COVID, Network Aviation continued to operate and actually expanded due to FIFO in Western Australia booming,” the pilot continued. “This more than doubled the flying time, but cost-cutting management did not double the pilot numbers, choosing to just work existing staff harder. The pilots earn 40% less than Qantas for doing an identical job. They also have significantly less benefits.”
Pilots who will fly Qantas 737s to cover some of the strike-affected NA schedule will receive almost double the salary of pilots flying similar A320 aircraft operated by NA.
Meanwhile, the threadbare state of Qantas’ maintenance and its lack of any backup aircraft for its long-haul routes continues to be exposed with a string of flight cancellations and delays pummeling passengers flying offshore during the school holidays.
For example, on September 23 Qantas cancelled two out of its three daily flights from Los Angeles to Australia. One of these was due to a sick pilot who could not be replaced because “no one will pick up the phone anymore”, according to an international pilot. This past weekend, Qantas QF1 to Singapore and London — an A380 — was delayed by 24 hours, as it had some air conditioning system work that needed to be done.
“As normal, no parts, no people and poor management,” an engineer explained
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Discrepancy sounded quite good on the telly. He was even crediting the crew for saving the A380, not a lone wolf thing. Quite a stripe change.
But could you trust him? On the Board? About as much as Goyder I'd reckon.
But could you trust him? On the Board? About as much as Goyder I'd reckon.
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Discrepancy has the exact same qualities as the outgoing CEO.
Tone deaf, can’t read a room, and genuinely thinks the world revolves around him. Highly inflated sense of self.
Every single decision he ever makes on a board would be to stroke his own ego.
To replace outgoing board members with more of the same would be the final nail.
An airline pilot who compares himself to Neil Armstrong should be put out to pasture and never talked about again.
Tone deaf, can’t read a room, and genuinely thinks the world revolves around him. Highly inflated sense of self.
Every single decision he ever makes on a board would be to stroke his own ego.
To replace outgoing board members with more of the same would be the final nail.
An airline pilot who compares himself to Neil Armstrong should be put out to pasture and never talked about again.
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Applying the heat to another sycophant.
Rear Window
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Alan Joyce’s biographer Peter Harbison has launched himself into the simmering Qantas furore to defend his man – and sell a few books.
Originally slated for Christmas release, Penguin Random House has brought forward the publication of Harbison’s tome, Alan Joyce and Qantas: the Transformation of an Australian Icon, to capitalise on the present public fixation with its subject.
Former Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce has left his successor with a difficult path to navigate. Eamon Gallagher There are hordes of dudded Qantas customers in Australia today with fresh and livid travel scars. To go with their PTSD, they’re sitting on multimillion Frequent Flyer point balances and/or irredeemable flight credits – both about as useful as Venezuelan bolívar. They would be hankering for the tell-all account, a therapeutic evisceration of the lying kangaroo. Sadly, this will not be the book for them.
In an extract published in The Weekend Australian on Saturday, Harbison argued that Joyce “transformed Qantas into one of the most successful airline groups in the world”. He added that Joyce was “fairly paid and performed well” and that “in seeking to make the airline bulletproof, Joyce surely couldn’t have done much better”.
This is the salad of myths that Joyce and his Qantas PR machine have quite beautifully perpetuated. Most of them have been swallowed whole by the Australian media, but particularly the fairy story that Qantas under Joyce was extraordinarily financially prosperous. One recent newspaper column even described Joyce as “one of the all-time money-generating machines of the aviation industry”. That really is looking at the world through Alan’s enchanted spectacles.
From the financial years 2009 to 2023 inclusive, which were the 15 full years Joyce ran Qantas, the company generated $9.2 billion of (pre-tax) statutory profits in the good years, but $10.6 billion of statutory losses in the bad years. That’s a total outcome over 15 years of negative $1.4 billion, or an average annual loss of $90 million.
Many would say – and I would agree – that you can’t blame Joyce for the $6.3 billion of statutory COVID losses he presided over. For the consistency of this exercise, then, you also can’t credit him for the record 2023 profit which, by Joyce’s own admission, was achieved by swingeing cost-outs that only COVID allowed him to make.
$220 million a year is so far from making Joyce the Profit Terminator that it isn’t funny. Qantas was a public company for 14 years before Joyce became CEO. Its average annual pre-tax profit over that time – between 1995 and 2008 – was $690 million. The difference is stark, even before you adjust the real value of those profits for inflation.
In those earlier years, of course, Qantas faced far less competition from foreign airlines on international routes. That much is certainly true. Yet, it doesn’t change the fact that Alan Joyce was never a money-generating machine.
The only way Joyce looks good is if you measure him by underlyingprofit, which is his preferred earnings metric. Of course it is! These are earnings where he has deleted the bad bits – minus the write-downs, excluding the fleet groundings, nothing inconvenient, basically. It would be terrific if shareholders could pay their mortgages with underlying earnings, but alas that is not a supernatural privilege extended to them.
Even including the COVID years, Joyce posted $6.2 billion of underlyingprofits in 15 years, or $413 million per year. They’re what Harbison’s seeing as he passes around Alan’s dutchie, his head spinning at the overwhelming magnificence of Alan’s magical world.
Harbison says Joyce was paid fairly, but when you take the financial performance of the company into account, $125 million was a helluva lot. That’s $8.3 million per year, on average, significantly more than the big four bank CEOs (notwithstanding Matt Comyn’s outlying $10.4 million remuneration in 2023). The smallest of the big four, ANZ, is still more than eight times bigger than Qantas by market capitalisation.
It is a matter of public record that nine months before COVID struck, in May 2019, the Qantas board extended Joyce’s tenure by “at least” three years. Sticking around made him a further $30 million.
The book extract, at least, was not wholly fan fiction. To give Harbison his due, he conceded that Joyce has a tin ear; that the Chairman’s Lounge “has no place in a fair, competitive marketplace”; that the current airport slot system is being abused; that “reform is needed to provide better consumer protections … for flight delays and cancellations”; that the Albanese government is engaged in protectionism; and that Qantas’ COVID response was, “by any standard … sadly lacking” and suffered “a disproportionate focus on rebuilding financial stability”.
But in lauding Joyce for leaving Qantas in a position of financial strength, Harbison completely ignores the fact that Joyce shamelessly stole from future profits to pad his own. Joyce did this by starving the airline of capital expenditure on new aircraft, the burden of which will now be unduly borne by his successor Vanessa Hudson, on whose desk now sits the world’s largest, overflowing sick bag.
What’s more, Joyce claimed to have achieved “structural changes in earnings” by taking $1 billion of annual costs out of the business. Hilariously, Hudson was CEO for three entire weeks when she announced that $230 million was being reinvested in customer improvements. How are the changes structural, when a quarter of them already need to be reinstated just three months into financial 2024? And that’s just so far!
Pass me Alan’s dutchie, Peter. Please, give me a toke. Ah, yes, I see! They’re underlying structural changes. You just have to squint at them a certain way.
If only the Qantas board had determined to pay Alan Joyce his remuneration on an underlying basis. Wouldn’t that be nice? They could’ve paid him three-fifths of stuff all and, as a long-term bonus, a kick up the arse for leaving the company in this mess. Shareholders would’ve voted for that.
Rear Window
Alan Joyce’s fan fiction fantasy
Joe AstonColumnistOct 3, 2023 – 7.30pmSave
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Alan Joyce’s biographer Peter Harbison has launched himself into the simmering Qantas furore to defend his man – and sell a few books.
Originally slated for Christmas release, Penguin Random House has brought forward the publication of Harbison’s tome, Alan Joyce and Qantas: the Transformation of an Australian Icon, to capitalise on the present public fixation with its subject.
Former Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce has left his successor with a difficult path to navigate. Eamon Gallagher There are hordes of dudded Qantas customers in Australia today with fresh and livid travel scars. To go with their PTSD, they’re sitting on multimillion Frequent Flyer point balances and/or irredeemable flight credits – both about as useful as Venezuelan bolívar. They would be hankering for the tell-all account, a therapeutic evisceration of the lying kangaroo. Sadly, this will not be the book for them.In an extract published in The Weekend Australian on Saturday, Harbison argued that Joyce “transformed Qantas into one of the most successful airline groups in the world”. He added that Joyce was “fairly paid and performed well” and that “in seeking to make the airline bulletproof, Joyce surely couldn’t have done much better”.
This is the salad of myths that Joyce and his Qantas PR machine have quite beautifully perpetuated. Most of them have been swallowed whole by the Australian media, but particularly the fairy story that Qantas under Joyce was extraordinarily financially prosperous. One recent newspaper column even described Joyce as “one of the all-time money-generating machines of the aviation industry”. That really is looking at the world through Alan’s enchanted spectacles.
From the financial years 2009 to 2023 inclusive, which were the 15 full years Joyce ran Qantas, the company generated $9.2 billion of (pre-tax) statutory profits in the good years, but $10.6 billion of statutory losses in the bad years. That’s a total outcome over 15 years of negative $1.4 billion, or an average annual loss of $90 million.
Many would say – and I would agree – that you can’t blame Joyce for the $6.3 billion of statutory COVID losses he presided over. For the consistency of this exercise, then, you also can’t credit him for the record 2023 profit which, by Joyce’s own admission, was achieved by swingeing cost-outs that only COVID allowed him to make.
Stark difference
So let’s take the 11 financial years from 2009 to 2019 inclusive, where Qantas made $6.7 billion of profits but $4.3 billion of losses. That’s a total outcome of $2.4 billion, or $220 million of average annual pre-tax profit.$220 million a year is so far from making Joyce the Profit Terminator that it isn’t funny. Qantas was a public company for 14 years before Joyce became CEO. Its average annual pre-tax profit over that time – between 1995 and 2008 – was $690 million. The difference is stark, even before you adjust the real value of those profits for inflation.
In those earlier years, of course, Qantas faced far less competition from foreign airlines on international routes. That much is certainly true. Yet, it doesn’t change the fact that Alan Joyce was never a money-generating machine.
The only way Joyce looks good is if you measure him by underlyingprofit, which is his preferred earnings metric. Of course it is! These are earnings where he has deleted the bad bits – minus the write-downs, excluding the fleet groundings, nothing inconvenient, basically. It would be terrific if shareholders could pay their mortgages with underlying earnings, but alas that is not a supernatural privilege extended to them.
Even including the COVID years, Joyce posted $6.2 billion of underlyingprofits in 15 years, or $413 million per year. They’re what Harbison’s seeing as he passes around Alan’s dutchie, his head spinning at the overwhelming magnificence of Alan’s magical world.
Harbison says Joyce was paid fairly, but when you take the financial performance of the company into account, $125 million was a helluva lot. That’s $8.3 million per year, on average, significantly more than the big four bank CEOs (notwithstanding Matt Comyn’s outlying $10.4 million remuneration in 2023). The smallest of the big four, ANZ, is still more than eight times bigger than Qantas by market capitalisation.
Challenging period
The new book seeks to perpetuate another myth, one that has already been discredited. Harbison reckons “it should be remembered that [Joyce] was preparing to leave [Qantas] when COVID struck in all its fury, and the board specifically requested he remain for a further three years to see the airline through this uniquely challenging period”.It is a matter of public record that nine months before COVID struck, in May 2019, the Qantas board extended Joyce’s tenure by “at least” three years. Sticking around made him a further $30 million.
The book extract, at least, was not wholly fan fiction. To give Harbison his due, he conceded that Joyce has a tin ear; that the Chairman’s Lounge “has no place in a fair, competitive marketplace”; that the current airport slot system is being abused; that “reform is needed to provide better consumer protections … for flight delays and cancellations”; that the Albanese government is engaged in protectionism; and that Qantas’ COVID response was, “by any standard … sadly lacking” and suffered “a disproportionate focus on rebuilding financial stability”.
But in lauding Joyce for leaving Qantas in a position of financial strength, Harbison completely ignores the fact that Joyce shamelessly stole from future profits to pad his own. Joyce did this by starving the airline of capital expenditure on new aircraft, the burden of which will now be unduly borne by his successor Vanessa Hudson, on whose desk now sits the world’s largest, overflowing sick bag.
What’s more, Joyce claimed to have achieved “structural changes in earnings” by taking $1 billion of annual costs out of the business. Hilariously, Hudson was CEO for three entire weeks when she announced that $230 million was being reinvested in customer improvements. How are the changes structural, when a quarter of them already need to be reinstated just three months into financial 2024? And that’s just so far!
Pass me Alan’s dutchie, Peter. Please, give me a toke. Ah, yes, I see! They’re underlying structural changes. You just have to squint at them a certain way.
If only the Qantas board had determined to pay Alan Joyce his remuneration on an underlying basis. Wouldn’t that be nice? They could’ve paid him three-fifths of stuff all and, as a long-term bonus, a kick up the arse for leaving the company in this mess. Shareholders would’ve voted for that.
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