Amid furore over PM’s flight upgrades, Qantas announces ‘conflicts of interest’ training

In the worlds of aviation and politics, timing is everything.

Take Qantas, the national carrier only just starting to shed the “embattled” tag earned during its 2023 annus horribilis, when former chief executive Alan Joyce quit amid sustained public fury over crummy service and a (now settled) legal action from the competition watchdog over selling tickets for cancelled flights.

That reputation rebuild has been rocked by this week’s release of a book by Qantas’ tormenter-in-chief Joe Aston, the former Australian Financial Review columnist who helped encourage Joyce into early retirement.

Advance extracts from Aston’s The Chairman’s Lounge, published by this masthead last weekend, revealed Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, a true Flying Kangaroo loyalist, had liaised with Joyce to receive flight upgrades worth tens of thousands of dollars for himself and his family.

The timing couldn’t be worse for Albanese, still relatively fresh from the conga line of criticism he copped over a tone-deaf decision to buy a $4.3 million clifftop home months from an election that will be fought over the cost of living and housing issues.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese contacted Qantas chief Alan Joyce directly about upgrades.Credit: Getty

Unsurprisingly, the Coalition (which is, of course, similarly shameless in seeking corporate largesse) smells blood and wants to drag Joyce back to parliament for a Senate inquiry.

As all this rippled through the Canberra bubble over the past few days, Qantas decided it was high time to send its staff an internal memo informing them they would be required to complete a course on “acting with integrity”.

The online course, which they are required to undertake by April 30 next year, centres on “managing the risks associated with gifts, benefits and hospitality”, as well as conflicts of interest.

Well then.

“The course will provide guidance on identifying and evaluating ethical dilemmas, considering the consequences and making informed and ethically sound decisions,” the memo said.

Timing is everything, but CBD hears the staff assignment was planned long before the release of Aston’s book. Instead, nobody at Qantas clocked the optics of pressing ‘send’ right when the headlines about political favouritism were kicking off yet again. The cockpit and cabin crew still seem woefully out of sync.

Qantas declined to comment.

Meanwhile, on the subject of exquisite timing, Aston’s book is set to launch on Tuesday night at Merivale cocktail bar Hemmesphere, hours after this masthead published an investigation revealing the alleged exploitation of female staff at the hospitality giant.