McCrann: Joyce gets whacked, but what about the politicians?

Former Qantas boss Alan Joyce has had his pay docked for some of his actions during Covid, but what about the politicians who caused far greater destruction?

Former Qantas boss Alan Joyce will lose $9.3m in bonus payments Qantas has decided to withhold due to company's Covid controversies.

OK. So former Qantas boss Alan Joyce has had his pay docked for some of the actions he took during and coming out of Covid to save Qantas from - to coin a phrase - “doing a Bonza”.

So what about the politicians - from the then prime minister Scott Morrison and the then opposition leader Anthony Albanese down, through all the state premiers and state opposition leaders, to the individual then MPs?

When are they going to have their pay docked for the far greater destruction they wreaked on Australia and 26 million Australians with their lockdowns, school closures and all the other brutalities?

Indeed, when is there going to be even the most basic accounting of what they did?

Something which PM Albanese has aimed quite deliberately and emphatically not to do with his fake Covid enquiry?

And let’s dismiss the argument that ‘they’ - and especially former Victorian Premier ‘Dictator Dan’ - had no choice. Otherwise, they’d have been slaughtering Granny.

Sweden at the national level and Florida’s Ron De Santis at the state level, showed there was a different - immeasurably better, freedom-focussed rather than knee-jerk panicked totalitarian - way.

The key point with both this broader question and the specific matter of Joyce and Qantas, is that governments were mandating and Qantas - driven by Joyce - were trying to survive.

Qantas like no other business in Australia had its business compulsorily and entirely closed for nearly 18 months with the combination of the domestic lockdowns and the ban on international travel.

Oh right, other than Virgin of course; and look what happened to it. It did “do a Bonza”.

Just maybe the shareholders - and indeed customers - of Virgin might have preferred to have had Joyce.

Qantas not only survived the Covid period - and the money it did get from government was cents in the dollar of the money it lost due to the closures - but also managed the challenging post-Covid period.

Look at the share price. A peak of $7.20 near the end of 2019; down to just $2.36 in March 2020; and now $5.84.

That gives the reality lie to all the rubbish talked about brand damage. Rubbish also being talked by its own (as usual, spineless) board of directors.

Are customers abandoning Qantas in droves? The share price wouldn’t be $5.84 if they were.

So Joyce - as it turned out - illegally sacked the ground workers; a decision taken when Qantas was right at the knackery door at the Covid peak.

So Qantas - and Joyce - lost the ACCC case over so-called “ghost flights”. Few, including the ACCC, understood how Qantas was trying to manage the Covid-comeback by managing flight feasibility.

Most potently, it’s got buried that the buck really didn’t stop at Joyce’s desk, but at chairman Richard Goyder’s.

If Joyce was a rogue CEO, and let’s be clear he wasn’t; but if he was, Goyder should have reined him or sacked him.

Finally, the quality of the review pinging Joyce is captured in three words. Former McKinsey partner Tom Saar pinged Joyce’s leadership style as leading to “low speak up”.

Anyone that could write that isn’t worth listening to.

Originally published as McCrann: Joyce gets whacked, but what about the politicians?