Editorial: Palaszczuk may follow Joyce to departure lounge

Premiers, just like chief executives, run real risks for their future if voters, like customers, start feeling they’re being taken for granted, writes the editor.

The abrupt departure of Qantas boss Alan Joyce proves one of the immutable laws of commerce – take your customers for granted and one day they’ll turn on you.

(The same could be said of politics, but more on that later.)

By most commercial measures, Joyce was a highly successful chief executive. During his 15 years at the helm, he steered Qantas through the global financial crisis, disruptive fights with the unions and, most recently, Covid.

While many airlines stumbled and fell – among them Brisbane-based Virgin, which needed $200m of Queensland government backing – Qantas not only survived, but also prospered.

It has just posted a record $2.5bn profit.

But along the way, Joyce – while becoming a bona fide executive celebrity – got customers off-side, initially and most famously in 2011 by stranding thousands of Qantas passengers around the world with his decision to ground the airline’s entire fleet over an industrial dispute.

More recently, Qantas has suffered serious self-inflicted damage to its brand, thanks to a series of own goals – from cancelled flights, lost bags, long wait times for call centre assistance, and overly complex processes for claiming flight credits.

These problems all had one thing in common – they stemmed from decisions that put the company rather than the customer first during the trying months of Covid disruptions.

The Qantas board admitted as much with a statement to the stock exchange this week: “We openly acknowledge that our service standards fell well short and we sincerely apologise.”

Qantas’s new chief executive Vanessa Hudson made the same mea culpa in a video message to staff after Mr Joyce’s resignation on Tuesday morning, suddenly and a month earlier than planned.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk with then Qantas CEO Alan Joyce in 2019

“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,” Ms Hudson told staff, before making the sensible point that a company’s job is to get the balance right between looking after its customers, its people, and the business itself.

“Right now, achieving this balance must first start with our customers – and that’s what we will be focused on with our new management team,” she said.

In other words, Qantas’ new boss has started off on the right foot by pledging to put customers first – that is not to take them for granted.

Which gets us back to politics. Premiers, just like chief executives, run real risks for their future if voters, like customers, start feeling they’re being taken for granted.

One of Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s great strengths during her first years in office
was her apparently genuine concern and empathy fellow Queenslanders.

But more recently, the public mood seems to have changed, as evidenced by the recent outbreak of leadership speculation fuelled by the Premier’s two-week holiday to Italy that she failed to even tell her own Treasurer about.

Of course, everyone is allowed a holiday and leadership speculation comes and goes.

But history tells us that once that speculation starts, it is hard to quell – particularly if the Premier’s own party members feel she has lost her biggest electoral asset – her relatability.

In the case of Qantas, things were brought to a head with a ritual sacrifice likely the result of a gentle push from the board.

Will this be Ms Palaszczuk’s fate? Who knows.

But we would suggest her first priority when she returns to work next week should be to learn the lessons here and start genuinely and graciously re-engaging with voters – they are her customers.

CITY ALIVE WITH FOOTY FEST

Queensland’s capital city is set to come alive with the Brisbane Broncos finals appearance headlining a weekend chock full of sport and culture, also including a Lions AFL final, a major country music themed race day and the ongoing Brisbane Festival.

The scheduling of so many big events at the same time is a perfect showcase of the River City’s ability to step up.

We see it each year with the highly successful NRL Magic Round and recently with the Matildas playing at Suncorp Stadium on the same night as the Brisbane Broncos clashed with the Roosters across town at the Gabba.

It is clear from the success of such games and the appetite of Queenslanders to get out and support our local teams and culture that we should look for more opportunities to align events to create a festive vibe for the city.

Go the Broncos and Lions.