Insiders open up about Albanese’s Qantas perks disaster

It hasn’t been a great week for the Prime Minister, but insiders have revealed that the Qantas perks scandal shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise.

The revelation that over several decades Anthony Albanese has trousered dozens of free flight upgrades from Qantas worth tens – if not hundreds – of thousands of dollars has sparked a political firestorm that is now burning out of control for the Prime Minister.

“It’s like a weather system that isn’t moving,” a senior government figure complained on Friday.

“I’m sick of defending it.”

The three fronts on which the PM is now engaged are - broadly speaking – questions over his own conduct as Transport Minister and Prime Minister in accepting what are effectively gifts from a company he was regulating.

There’s also the issue of the appropriateness of a disclosure system which allowed this to happen in plain view.

In Canberra however, the talk is not so much about the details or the rights and wrongs of the PM’s conduct, as about the inept way he has handled the scandal, which comes fast on the heels of his decision to spend $4.3 million on a Central Coast weekender.

That the story is still running unchecked a week after the extracts from Joe Aston’s book The Chairman’s Lounge were published, has Labor figures deeply worried about how match fit the Government’s leadership is going into next year’s election.

This has in turn revived memories of the disastrous first week of the last election campaign when Albanese couldn’t name the unemployment or cash RBA cash rates and fears that he learned nothing from that near political death experience.

“If this happened during an election it would be an absolute disaster for Labor,” says Cameron Milner, the former chief of staff to Bill Shorten, who in recent months has become a trenchant public critic of Albanese’s performance.

Insiders say part of the problem is that having been in parliament since 1996 Albanese has become all too accustomed to the perks that come with being a member of Club Fed.

“His problem is that during his three decades in parliament, community standards have really moved and he’s been totally wrong footed by that,” Milner said.

“He thinks he hasn’t done anything, and by the standards of 1996 he hasn’t.”

But even by the standards of Club Fed Albo has a good go of it.

In 2021 it was revealed he had accepted freebies to seven AFL grand finals, seven years at the Australian Open, four NRL grand finals, two Melbourne Cups and seven international cricket fixtures since 2009.

He’d also been comped to 23 concerts to acts such as U2, Prince and Adele as well, opera and theatre events and States of Origin.

Parliamentary travel records showed taxpayers had spent $20,000 for his travel and flights and accommodation his trips to the Australian Open, Melbourne Cup and Grand finals since 2008.

He might be the Marrickville man-of-the people who was raised by a single mother in public housing but as a NSW Labor MP said in 2021, seeing Mr Albanese at an A-list event was “about as surprising as running into Deidre Chambers” while another said it was well-known “the Left enjoy the freebies most.”

“He’s institutionalised and has worked out how to extract every bit of free s**t,” one of his colleagues complained this week.

The PM at the women’s FIFA World Cup.

Watching his beloved Rabbitohs.

Under Bill Shorten’s leadership Labor in Opposition became experts at unearthing Coalition expenses scandals, stories Albanese never hid his distaste for.

One of first acts as leader was to disband Shorten’s opposition research team.

Having been there a long time he understood there was nothing to be gained from drawing attention to a system everyone benefited from.

“I think it was probably a bit like Fight Club,” a minister jokes, adding, more seriously, “there’s a rationale not to dial these things up” for Labor.

“I think for parties of government - particularly of the centre-left - who want to effect change, public cynicism is particularly dangerous because if people believe ‘you’re all the same’ then nothing you do matters,” he said.

“Right around the world we are seeing moves to populism – so anything that makes people think there’s no point in engaging in mainstream democratic politics is bad for mainstream democratic politics.”

Pollster Kosmos Samaras agrees the Qantas story – like the earlier story about the $4.3 million house – feeds into existing prejudices.

“It further bakes in the strong perception that he is not one of them – that he is disconnected from the day-to-day lives of ordinary Australians,” he said.

He said the freebies were already a problem before this story broke.

“It comes up all the time,” he said.

It’s not been a great week for the PM.

“It’s not difficult to get an unprompted response to the brand the Prime Minister has created for himself” and it wasn’t a good one.

“Voters don’t share the same level of understanding that those in Canberra like to express for the Prime Minister,” he said.

He said focus groups conducted in the past week showed voters were already very aware of the Qantas story and didn’t care about whether or not the rules had been followed.

“They don’t pick up on any of that – what they notice is the level of service that politicians are getting from airlines compared to most Australians’ experience which is cancelled flights and lost bags,” he said.

A former NSW Labor MP who regards the PM as “one of the most decent honest people I’ve dealt with” said it was unfair that this was being sheeted home to him.

“You may mention it’s a pox on everyone’s house but the big target is going to be on Albo when the truth is they’re all in the same boat,” he said.

“If you’re saying the problem’s Albo – I say no the system is the problem.”

Others are less forgiving, particularly of the upgrades he got when transport minister.

“That’s where I think the real turpitude is,” a colleague said.

“He was the transport minister and he was getting favours from a major transport company.”

Senior Government figures said whatever happened, the system that allows MPs to claim unlimited upgrades as long as they were declared, clearly needed reforming.

But unless the Government – and particularly the Prime Minister – can improve how it is selling its message about what it is doing, it won’t be long before there’s another mess to clear up, Samaras warns.

“The one thing that’s clearly missing is a narrative and the only narrative they’re (the voters) getting is this,” he said.

A backbencher is more diplomatic, saying it was “an unfortunate set of circumstances” that was making it hard to get across a message on cost-of-living.

“The point about these two stories is their very existence has created this opportunity cost,” he said.

Milner is harsher, saying Albo’s problem at the moment is “as soon as he is under pressure he loses the power of speech.”

Originally published as Insiders open up about Albanese’s Qantas perks disaster