James Campbell: PM becoming known as ‘Albo-freebie’ after extent of Qantas upgrades revealed
That politicians get special treatment from airlines is not exactly a state secret. But it turns out that Anthony Albanese’s treatment from Qantas was very special indeed.
James Campbell
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Just as the national conversation was moving on from his $4.3 million Central Coast ‘weekender’ there’s a new problem brewing for Albo, one that goes beyond what he does with his own money.
On Saturday, extracts from a new book revealed that in the past 15 years the Prime Minister has received tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of free airline upgrades from Qantas.
The book The Chairman’s Lounge by Joe Aston also claims that “according to Qantas insiders”, the Marrickville man-of-the people “would liaise with (Alan) Joyce directly about his personal travel.”
That politicians get special treatment from airlines is not exactly a state secret of course but it turns out that Albo’s treatment is very special indeed.
Aston writes that “(w)hile other Qantas executives could authorise “space available” upgrades in flight bookings, meaning an upgrade would occur only if there was an empty business or first class seat after check-in had closed, only Joyce could issue “confirmed” or guaranteed upgrades, the kind that Albanese was treated to.”
Why does this matter? Well for starters there’s small matter that for ten of the years Albo was getting thousands of bucks a year in free upgrades, he was either the transport or shadow transport minister.
Then there’s the allegation – which has never been denied – that shortly after he became Prime Minister, Albo asked Joyce to give his son Nathan membership of the Chairman’s Lounge.
The Chairman’s Lounge, Qantas’s invite-only getaway for the men and women who run Australia, isn’t just, as its name suggests, a place where they can relax with free food and drink courtesy of the airline’s shareholders.
As Aston explains, its members are also eligible for “complimentary upgrades to business class (subject to availability), or to first class on international flights, and a dedicated VIP service line”.
In other words, as he must have known full well, in asking Joyce to give his son one of these golden tickets the Prime Minister was soliciting a gift potentially worth tens of thousands of dollars.
As I wrote at the time it was reported, the Chairman’s Lounge is the closest thing we have to the “special” shops and hospitals in the old Soviet Union, which were available only to the elite of the Communist Party and their children.
That Albo understood asking for free shit for your kids is a shocking look for a Prime Minister is demonstrated by the lengths to which he went to try and kill the story.
“Minutes after I’d put the fact of Nathan Albanese’s Chairman’s Lounge membership to the prime minister’s office for comment,” Aston writes, “Anthony Albanese called the masthead’s then editor-in-chief, Michael Stutchbury.”
His argument was that politicians’ families should be off limits.
It goes without saying of course that this wasn’t a story about a politician’s family, it was a story about a politician using his office to gain a material advantage for a relative, something which is entirely unsurprising in most of the world.
It goes without saying too that in most of the world it would be entirely unsurprising to discover that the government of a politician who had obtained such an advantage might later use its power to benefit the dispenser of this largesse.
Which in the case of Qatar Airlines’ bid to increase the number of its flights into Australia is exactly what happened.
The Prime Minister has denied that he was lobbied by Qantas before his government rejected Qatar.
But given the long term relationship between the two, you could be forgiven for thinking they didn’t need to.
Albo could be forgiven for wondering why since his Qantas freebies have been sitting in plain view on the public record they should be a problem for him now.
His misfortune is that until Aston came along, no one had thought to add them up.
He’s also had bad timing in that this revelation comes hot on the heels of the house purchase which itself followed on from earlier criticism he’s copped for flying round the country to A-list event after A-list event, none of which he ever seems to pay for.
It also comes just weeks after a similar scandal in the UK which has seen the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer forced to repay thousands of pounds in gifts he has received including almost £3,400 for four Taylor Swift tickets – something Albo has conspicuously failed to do.
Back in the week at which it was revealed he’d backed up that Taylor Swift gig with a private Katy Perry show at the Pratt family pad, I warned Labor would be in trouble if the punters decide this isn’t the Albanese government they’ve got but the Albo-freebie government.
Australians need to ask themselves is this the sort of country we want to live in?
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