Qantas boss Alan Joyce gives Victoria a serve for border hypocrisy

Victoria’s border closure to Sydney has become personal for Qantas boss Alan Joyce, and he is not happy.

Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said it seemed Australia had become a victim of its own success in managing the COVID crisis. Picture: Peter Parks/AFP

Victoria’s border closure to Sydney has become personal for Qantas Group CEO Alan Joyce, who has revealed his brother and his family are among thousands of people unable to return home.

In a strongly worded statement calling out Victoria’s government, Mr Joyce said it was hard to understand the decision to allow more than 1000 people in from overseas for the Australian Open, while denying residents the right to return with some basic precautions.

As a result of the border closure, Qantas and Jetstar had cancelled almost 3000 flights between Sydney and Melbourne, with significant social and economic consequences.

Mr Joyce said it seemed Australia had become a victim of its own success in managing the Covid crisis, with some states now pursuing eradication rather than suppression.

“That frankly is putting a lot of broader social and economic things at risk. We have to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time,” said Mr Joyce.

“Eradication is going to be impossible, particularly while we’re also bringing Aussies home from hot spots overseas.”

Mr Joyce said Victoria’s approach to Sydney seemed “out of proportion with the actual risk”, and made it hard to reconcile the decision to allow more than 1000 people in from overseas for the Australian Open tennis.

“The safeguards in place for the tennis and the decision to proceed with the Open are all about managing the risk, and that’s the right way to look at it,” said Mr Joyce.

“It’s an example of walking and chewing gum in the middle of a pandemic. But – at the same time – to deny people who actually live in the state the right to return with some basic precautions that reflect the extremely low level of community transmission in Sydney, is bizarre at a policy level and devastating at a social level.”

The stance had affected him personally, with his own brother and his family stuck in Sydney with Mr Joyce after travelling from Melbourne to spend Christmas together.

“They can’t go home,” he said. “They can stay with me as long as they like but there are a lot of other people in the same boat, with kids, who are spending money they don’t have on living away from home.”

He called for a risk-based, common sense approach, to “wean ourselves off these kneejerk border closures as a form of risk management”.

“People need to be able to go home, to move around the country, to get back to business,” said Mr Joyce.

“We can do that if we trust in the systems and the fantastic job Australians have done at following them.”