Clipping wings of once great airline

QANTAS is paying the price of being too smart by half. The Flying Kangaroo risks becoming road kill courtesy of the truly stupid commercially-restrictive policies of the ALP and the Greens, or, even more senselessly, at its own suicidal hand because of its ill-advised propensity to engage in party politics.

It would seem the brains in Qantas are lodged in the cockpit, not behind management desks. As a disclaimer, I enjoy flying Qantas but like most Australians, I look at price when I buy air travel, just as I do when I buy a computer or go to the supermarket to stock up on essentials. I have never been gladhanded by Qantas and ushered into the Chairman’s Lounge where Qantas practises its form of soft diplomacy, but I have appreciated the many kind acts by individual staff members who have offered to move me away from parents who have been unable to comfort their screaming children, or assist me with difficult connections. I’m not alone in expressing a preference for Qantas (I’ll fly with it today) and I am still awestruck by the professionalism of pilots like the truly outstanding Captain Richard Champion de Crespigny, who landed QF32 safely in Singapore after one of the Airbus A380’s four Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines exploded just four minutes after take-off from the same airport on November 4, 2010. But Qantas management under CEO Alan Joyce is another matter, entirely, and his team seems just as inept as Labor’s team under both prime minister Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard and Opposition Leader Bill “Short-term” Shorten. Joyce’s backflip on the debilitating effect of Labor’s carbon tax on the Qantas bottom-line was breathtaking in its farcicality matched only by his equally senseless reversal on his airline’s economic prospects. After warning of Qantas possible demise four months ago, and pleading for loan guarantees from the federal government, Joyce now claims a debt default will “never happen” and that “Qantas is a very healthy airline”. After last week reassuring its Labor friends that the carbon tax was not a factor in its current crisis, Joyce this week admitted that the carbon tax (which cost the airline $106 million last year) was “among the most significant challenges we face”. When Captain de Crespigny wrote about his experiences in handling an aircraft in which all essential computer links were lost — he concentrated on flying the aircraft. Joyce is no de Crespigny. He has done all but crash the entire airline with his political tailspins and loop the loops. While Joyce has staggered the financial community, the cognoscenti in the political class have been stunned by Labor’s gravity-defying lack of logic. Labor insider David Epstein, who was Rudd’s chief-of-staff before making a soft landing in the Labor-friendly Qantas publicity machine, has now belled the hypocritical Opposition cat with his references to Labor’s Aviation White Paper of December ’09 in which the then government made a commitment to change the Qantas Sale Act to remove the 25/35 rule, but then did nothing in the parliament. The Air Navigation Act caps foreign ownership of Qantas at 49 per cent if it wants to use Australian traffic rights on international routes. The Qantas Sale Act, under which the airline was privatised (by Labor), also limits foreign ownership of Qantas to 49 per cent. Foreign airlines are subject to further restrictions under the Qantas Sale Act, which stipulates a 35-per cent limit for all foreign airline shareholdings combined. In addition, a single foreign entity can hold no more than 25 per cent of the airline’s shares. In an article in The Financial Review, Epstein suggested Labor’s then transport minister Anthony Albanese actually prepared the amendments but Albanese told the ABC on Monday that while they “looked positively” at the change they “didn’t have the support to get that through.” In fact, Labor wasn’t just looking “positively” in its White Paper, the document actually says: “Currently, there are secondary foreign ownership limits that apply to Qantas, but not to other Australian international airlines. The government will amend the Qantas Sale Act 1992 to remove these limits so the same investment regime will apply to all airlines. This will increase Qantas’s ability to compete for capital and to have more flexible equity arrangements consistent with other Australian international airlines.” But Labor didn’t amend the Sales Act, undoubtedly because of opposition from the Greens and South Australian independent Nick Xenophon in the Senate (and Labor’s factional bosses in the union movement). If the Flying Kangaroo is to be given a chance it must be free to compete with the international airlines which Labor permitted to increase flights in accord with its White Paper. By denying it the other White Paper recommendation — dropping the 25/35 rule — Labor ensured the ‘Roo would be hamstrung. In insisting that its carbon tax remain, the Opposition has shown itself to be as shackled to ideology just as resolutely as humans were grounded by gravity before the Wright brothers. REFUGEE PROTOCOLS WEED OUT UNDESIRABLE ELEMENTS THE Coalition government has cancelled the bridging visas of 31 so-called asylum seekers who have had criminal charges brought against them. Curiously, the shrieking mob that disrupted inner-Sydney traffic with its protest against the stop-the-boat policy has not alluded to these individuals. Logically, an orderly migration program under which refugees are interviewed prior to being given a coveted opportunity to resettle in Australia has a greater chance of weeding out those who may not understand our laws than the alternate — the unchecked flow of self-selected, people-smuggler clients that flourished under Labor with the Greens’ backing. One of those who might have been rejected had an interview been conducted was Mohammed Salem Nazari, the 34-year-old father-of-five whom Magistrate Brian Williams recently jailed for indecently assaulting girls aged between 14 and 18 at the Sydney Olympic Park Aquatic pool. The magistrate noted there “was a significant difference of lifestyle” between Australia and Nazari’s native Afghanistan but that Nazari should have been aware of the laws of this country. Why would he think that when those who noisily support illegal arrivals like Nazari seem to be just as blind to either Australian or international law? Nor does the rabble ever acknowledge the 1200-plus deaths at sea that were attendant upon the dismantling of the Howard government’s effective suite of policies. Yet, the unfortunate death of one economic refugee at the detention centre on Manus Island (established by Labor) inflames the morally superior to even greater heights of hypocritical hand-wringing. Greens leader Christine Milne even talks of interfering in the sovereign affairs of Papua New Guinea in a bid to have the PNG camp closed. How very neo-colonialist — as if the people of PNG are incapable of deciding their own policies. What the Greens and the Labor Left don’t understand is that their aberrant views — including their support for those who wish to avoid the UN’s international refugee protocols — would make them exceedingly unpopular almost everywhere, including PNG.