Qantas boss Alan Joyce summoned just before Qantas results
The Australian Senate has summonsed outgoing Qantas CEO Alan Joyce to appear before an inquiry after claims he repeatedly refused to attend voluntarily.
The Australian Senate has summonsed outgoing Qantas CEO Alan Joyce, requesting he appear before an inquiry into the cost-of-living crisis after claims he repeatedly refused to attend voluntarily.
It is understood he will be grilled on high airfares, his personal bonuses, the airline’s Covid travel credit scheme and outsourcing of ground handling staff.
On Wednesday, just a day before Qantas posted its full-year results with a statutory profit of $1.74 billion, Labor senator Tony Sheldon claimed Mr Joyce resisted a request to answer questions before a Senate select committee hearing on Monday in Melbourne.
A Qantas spokesperson said Mr Joyce was invited to attend a cost-of-living Senate committee hearing and to nominate relevant executives, “which we did”.
According to the airline, the Committee’s written request and instruction was that it is “at the discretion of Qantas to identify the witnesses that would be most appropriate to appear”.
“Despite no other company CEO being required to attend, the committee subsequently insisted that Qantas CEO Alan Joyce appear, which he will do,” the spokesperson said.
Mr Sheldon, a fierce critic of Qantas and a former official at the Transport Workers’ Union,
accused the outgoing CEO of “almost a decade of evading parliamentary scrutiny”.
“Even while receiving a $2.7 billion no-strings-attached bailout from the Morrison Government, Mr Joyce has a lot to answer for,” he said in a statement.
“Qantas has transformed from an aviation pioneer, into a pioneer of corporate greed, extracting every last cent possible from its workers, its customers and even the previous federal government.”
He continued the airline had changed for the worse under Mr Joyce’s leadership, and it was time “Qantas is held to account”.
The airline accused Mr Sheldon of having his “own agenda” in November 2022 and created a tab on its website to “correct his claims”.
Meanwhile, Mr Joyce has not personally appeared before the Senate since March 2014, when he defended the airline’s decision to cut 5000 jobs and send aircraft maintenance work offshore.
Although it is customary for chief executives of ASX-listed companies to regularly appear before the Senate, none have appeared at this inquiry, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, adding that a formal summons issued for a chief executive is unusual given they are not a public officeholder.
At the inquiry, Mr Joyce will be questioned on how Qantas’ decisions have impacted cost-of-living pressures for its workforce, customers and across the broader economy.
This will include soaring ticket prices, its criticised flight credits scheme and the outsourcing of over 1,700 ground and fleet presentation workers.
On Monday, Echo Law announced proceedings against the airline in the federal court on behalf of “hundreds of thousands” of Qantas customers whose flights were cancelled during the Covid pandemic due to travel restrictions.
Echo Law partner Andrew Paull accused the airline of treating its customers “as providers of over $1 billion in interest-free loans”.
“We allege Qantas breached the law by failing to be transparent and immediately issue refunds to customers when flights were cancelled,” he said. “Instead, Qantas held onto its customers’ money and pushed out travel credits with strict conditions, which we allege it was not entitled to do. It now needs to be held accountable and refund that money with interest.”
Qantas said “we completely reject these claims” in a statement on Monday.
Meanwhile, Qantas together with Virgin, were accused of anti-competitive behaviour in an attempt to squeeze out new entrants to the airline industry.
A separate parliamentary inquiry sitting on Wednesday heard criticisms of the highly concentrated market structure of Australia’s aviation industry, where the Qantas Group and Virgin duopoly have a combined 95 per cent market share.
Speaking at the inquiry, Rex Airlines deputy chair John Sharp accused Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin of selling tickets for services they never planned to run, in an attempt to retain their ‘slots’ and block smaller airlines from running services.
The alleged behaviour, which the airlines strongly deny engaging in, is incentivised under strict legislation governing the operation of flights in and out of Sydney that allocates airlines the time windows or ‘slots’.
If airlines don’t operate in their slot 80 per cent of the time, they risk losing it, therefore allowing other airlines to use them.
It comes as Qantas backed the government’s decision to block Qatar Airways, a partner of Virgin, from expanding its network in Australia.
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