He says Qantas’ research into people’s intent to travel domestically found it’s at levels twice what it was before COVID-19 struck and up more than 60 per cent on what it was for international travel.

“So, we have huge demand and the issue is meeting that demand by reactivating aircraft, retraining pilots, re-hiring cabin crew that left the industry and getting [long-haul] aircraft into heavy maintenance,” Joyce says.

“There’s so many logjams in the entire industry and then the manufacturers are confronting supply-chain issues when it comes to delivering new aircraft.”

For example, Joyce cites one of the engine manufacturers that stopped producing during COVID because there were no fresh orders for aircraft.

At the same time, one of the suppliers to the manufacturer, a fair way down the supply chain, was a three-person family-run company manufacturing small temperature gauges needed in the engine.

During COVID, the father died and his two sons switched to producing parts for the automotive industry so when manufacturing started up again, there was no access to the temperature gauges and suddenly a whole bunch of $30 million engines were stuck on the production line.

For Joyce, the story illustrates the many small challenges confronting airlines as they’ve had to ramp up operations after virtually three years of being mothballed.

Also at the roundtable, Aurizon boss Andrew Harding spoke of disruption and the havoc extreme weather has played on the nation’s rail systems.

“On our recent earnings call I had to explain wet weather beyond it just being extreme but also prolonged,” says Harding.

“We now have these extreme weather events on a regular basis and a lot of the rail systems have struggled across the country although not so much in Western Australia.

“In fact, they’ve got the benefits with a massive grain season but the rest of the country has just seen huge amounts of disruptive weather.”

On a positive note, Aurizon is seeing the benefits of a commodities super cycle starting to play out, especially around future-facing commodities that have a major role in the energy transition such as those needed in the manufacture of electric vehicles.

On a less fashionable note, Harding says coal is doing amazingly well, “which is beyond belief but it’s a reality at present”.

For fellow roundtable participant Seven Group chief executive Ryan Stokes, inclement weather has proved a mixed blessing depending on how it affects different businesses in the group.

For example, the rains haven’t helped Coates because “concrete doesn’t dry in the rain” and the cancellation dynamic doesn’t play well in a business where margins are tight.

Yet blaming the weather is not something Stokes does as it’s a variable that business has no control over.

So what Coates has focused on is the upside associated with some of the flood recovery work and supporting its customers. Going further, the company is well-placed to play a big role in Australia’s $1trillion infrastructure boom as it spurts back into life.

Stokes was keen to point out one issue that last year’s rains highlighted as a national problem and that was our reliance on only one rail line between the eastern seaboard and the west.

Flooding in South Australia early last year washed out more than 300 kilometres of the only rail line that brings food and supplies into WA from the east coast and it was something that had a material effect on Coates’ business in Western Australia.

“The line was closed for four weeks and when you already have supply-chain issues that dynamic suddenly means you’ve got a backlog of supply-chain problems through the year,” Stokes says.

“It’s an element you know you’ve just got to work through but that was a massive disruption. What it highlights is just how interconnected and how reliant and critical that one line is to east-west supply.”

Beyond the large companies at the roundtable, Aware Super’s chief executive, Deanne Stewart, was keen to point out that super investors were jittery at present with so much uncertainty in the market.

She says Aware Super’s own member tracking has seen investor satisfaction come down appreciably because returns were negative and just about every super fund saw volatility.

“The big job for us is working out how to cut through and actually keep people calm through it,” Stewart says.

“At the beginning of COVID, we saw a huge number of members switch out of growth and into cash.”

The problem was when the market did rebound, those members missed out, so Stewart says Aware has redoubled its efforts to calm investor jitters.

“We’ve also tried to segment our members, especially those that are younger to encourage them to not take action and to just stay calm,” she says. “As an industry, we have a really big job to get across this message that super is there for the long term, so let it ride out.”

Chief executive of fellow industry super fund behemoth AustralianSuper, Paul Schroder, agrees investors must understand superannuation is a long-term play and a big part of that understanding is realising the role these long-term investments will have in the global energy transition.

Importantly, he says investors need to realise super funds rely on companies to be great allocators of capital when it comes to their own transition journeys.

“We need to stand behind those companies who are going to make the decisions that will make the transition work in a stable and reliable manner,” Schroder says.

“It’s a really important risk to manage because there’s no earnings on a burning planet so we can’t make any money (in the long term) unless we get this sorted out – so AustralianSuper is committed to being part of something that is doing something about it.”