Piers Akerman: Albanese’s laboured response to upgrade scandal turned a little turbulence into a midair crisis
Using political office to seek preferential upgrades is one rort which can easily be stopped, write Piers Akerman.
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What is about Labor leaders and their egos?
Back in the day when Kevin “747” Rudd was busily jetsetting off here and everywhere, a joke about former governor-general and former foreign affairs minister Bill Hayden and former prime ministers Paul Keating and Bob Hawke did the rounds.
The gag had the three men being asked about their favourite sounds.
Hawke said it was an MCG-sized crowd cheering him to the rafters, Keating said it was one of Mahler’s divine symphonies – and Hayden said it was the tinkling of ice as the drinks trolley rolled down the first-class aisle on a Qantas jet taking off for Europe.
The current Prime Minister could easily be substituted for Hayden, if you threw in the soothing sound of the night-time surf breaking on the beach below his new $4.3m Copacabana clifftop home.
In reality, Anthony Albanese has such a tin ear and inability to read the room he might not actually hear or see the ocean when he and significant other Jodie Haydon move in.
He certainly failed to learn anything from past political scandals which have made it resoundingly clear that it’s rarely the act that trips the culprit but the response.
In failing to directly answer legitimate questions about upgrades he received as transport minister following requests by him or on his behalf, Albanese showed he had forgotten all his expensive media training.
Now he may have done absolutely nothing wrong but he compounded his basic error by attempting to smear whistleblower author and former Financial Review columnist Joe Aston and make the question about other politicians.
Excerpts from Aston’s book on Qantas, The Chairman’s Lounge mean it has received greater publicity over the past week than any other launched this year. And so far its greatest promoter has been the unwitting Albanese, whom the author says has an “insatiable appetite for VIP travel and hospitality”.
According to the book, Albanese received at least 22 free flight upgrades possibly worth six figures when he was transport minister in the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments, as well as on flights taken when he was opposition spokesman on transport between 2013 and 2019.
Following up on its former columnist’s scoop, the Fin Review claimed that Albanese also failed to declare thousands of dollars in flight upgrades taken by his former wife, the former NSW Labor deputy premier Carmel Tebbutt, from Qantas and its code-share partner Emirates despite the rules of conduct explicitly stating that upgrades for spouses and children be recorded.
I’ve been into Qantas’ Chairman’s Lounge but only as a guest in the last century before the Qantas board embraced Alan Joyce and his woke culture.
Joyce played to Albanese with the airline’s endorsement of the Yes position before last year’s voice to parliament referendum and the playing of a recorded Welcome to Country announcement when flights landed at Australian airports.
Politicians’ perks are always easy targets for the media, and many in the media are just as guilty about accepting largesse without disclosure, but few colleagues in my experience ever had their hands out so obviously.
No amount of prime ministerial blather will dispel the reeking smell of ordure drifting from these disclosures and as the holiday season advances, as punters queue to board flights to Melbourne for the Cup, Albanese’s ineffectual ears will be burning as disgruntled travellers shuffle toward check-in counters.
As is said in pubs around the nation, a racket is only a rort when you’re not in on it.
Using political office to seek preferential upgrades is one rort which can easily be stopped.
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Originally published as Piers Akerman: Albanese’s laboured response to upgrade scandal turned a little turbulence into a midair crisis
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