What finished Alan Joyce is that he killed our love for his airline

It wasn’t because of cancelled flights and dudded shareholders that Alan Joyce had to quit Qantas — it was because he killed Australians’ love for his airline with his divisive identity politics.

Alan Joyce had to abruptly quit Qantas – instantly – this week because he turned the airline into something we could no longer love.

He wasn’t forced out two months early just because of anger that he’d tried to rob customers of credits from cancelled flights, or had sold thousands of tickets to flights already cancelled.

Joyce certainly didn’t have to flee because he’d dudded shareholders. On the contrary: he’d steered his airline through a devastating lockdown and even posted a record profit of $2.5bn.

What finally finished him is that he’d killed Australians’ love for his airline, so no-one cared to give him and Qantas any benefit of any doubt.

The hard truth is that Qantas is no longer the symbol of national pride and unity it was in the 1990s.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with Alan Joyce at the launch of the Qantas 'Yes' Campaign. Picture: Gaye Gerard

Back then, Qantas ads played on high rotation with children singing “I Still Call Australian Home”, perfectly capturing Qantas’s image as our “national airline”.

But, tellingly, when Joyce took over as CEO, the first remake of that ad played identity politics. This time the song was sung in an Aboriginal language not understood by 99.9 per cent of Australians, including most Aborigines.

Under Joyce, Qantas threw itself into divisive identity politics like it had never done before – into same-sex marriage, into promoting the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, and into race wars, badgering passengers with acknowledgments of traditional owners at every landing.

Last month, Joyce even backed Labor’s Voice to Parliament, unveiling Qantas jets painted with the Yes slogan.

There’s a rule that when you play politics you alienate everyone on the other side. For a business, it’s safer to shut up and not aggravate your customers.

Joyce instead turned Qantas into his political soapbox. Sure, at first he got the left that hated him for his earlier union-busting to love his gay-marriage politicking, but his stunt with the Voice – fast sinking in the polls – seemed too obvious and, worse, too unpopular.

His suckuppery to the Prime Minister was also too gross, giving his son membership of Qantas’s luxury chairman’s lounge, made worse when the government pampered Qantas with a ban on extra Qatar Airways flights that would have cut ticket prices.

The result: Qantas no longer represents all Australians. It’s not a symbol of unity. Under Joyce, it’s instead become an emblem of division, leaving Joyce with not even a teaspoon of love in the well to keep him alive when things got hot.

Originally published as What finished Alan Joyce is that he killed our love for his airline