Alan Joyce in bid to lift spirit of Qantas; Josh Frydenberg’s dire forecast
The end of school holidays and looming travel surge has prompted Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce to shore up staff morale ahead of what will be another mega weekend at airports as travellers return home amid the national staff shortage.
As this column has previously reported, the airline’s chief customer officer, Stephanie Tully, is instead on holidays. While she enjoys the ski slopes of Canada – seriously – Joyce has had all shoulders to the wheel dealing with the carrier’s biggest period of travel in more than two years.
The airline boss – who earlier blamed passengers for clogging up airport queues – sprinkled praise upon staff via two letters obtained by Margin Call congratulating their efforts amid a “challenging few weeks”.
First, Joyce wrote to the 200 or so HQ staff who volunteered to work in operational areas during the Easter chaos.
“We’re dealing with a perfect storm at the moment,” Joyce said. “Lots of travel demand combined with high levels of pandemic-related absences.
“You helped with lost bags, airport queues, customer inquiries and more.
“What you did made a tangible difference … you gave a morale boost to those operational areas who felt supported.”
And that, Joyce declared, was what made Qantas “special” and able to “rise to any challenge”.
Folks left waiting days for lost baggage might not agree.
Giving credits
Alan Joyce’s second letter was to his minions, acknowledging that by the end of this week and across the school holidays Qantas will have carried more than 1.5 million people on more than 15,000 flights.
“Not all has gone as smoothly as we had hoped,” the boss noted. “There were some unintended consequences – like bag rooms overflowing because passengers … turned up hours before their flights to get through security.”
But Joyce commended staff who at the last minute took on extra shifts and declared that “frontline and operations teams did extraordinary work over this extraordinary period”.
As a thank you, about 15,000 Qantas staff who did at least one shift over the school holiday period will in early June get a $250 staff travel credit.
That’s a $3.75m boost to Qantas revenue, right there, without any lift in staff costs.
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Josh’s dire forecast
Overheard at a Liberal fundraiser on Tuesday evening was none other than Josh Frydenberg bemoaning to the gathered faithful that the most likely outcome of the election would be a minority Labor government supported by Climate 200 candidates, or “fake independents”, as the Treasurer dubbed them.
A case of expectation management, perhaps, or is it a down-in-the-mouth play for more dinero?
The gloomy assessment was proffered during a dinner for Mackellar MP Jason Falinski and Liberal candidate Jenny Ware, a lawyer anointed to stand in the seat of Hughes ahead of Holsworthy MP Melanie Gibbons and former Young Liberals president Alex Dore (he didn’t nominate but was supported internally).
Meanwhile, Hughes independent Georgia Steele appears to have secured prime ad space on Ben Fordham’s 2GB morning show, signalling the kind of campaign largesse that is spooking the Liberals with its menace of an ample war chest.
Labor is basically running dead in Hughes, so the concern is that preferences could nudge Steele over the line if she polls second on the primary vote.
But back to Frydenberg. Ware’s fundraising numbers were apparently so meagre that they were neatly combined with those of Falinski’s to fill the Martin Place boardroom. About 20 people attended, according to our eyes in the room.
The Treasurer’s postprandial speech also included much hand-wringing for his seat of Kooyong, which faces no small threat from another teal independent, Monique Ryan.
Recent Ucomm polling suggests Ryan is on track for a historic upset in Kooyong, although we would caution against rushing to a saturnine view, especially given that Ryan commissioned the poll and because Ucomm bears ties to the union movement. The company also incorrectly predicted a Labor victory two weeks out from the 2019 election in NSW.
Frydenberg is in Sydney for a variety of campaign launches, including that of Reid’s Fiona Martin that was held at the Drummoyne Sailing Club on Wednesday afternoon, and where festivities were briefly interrupted by Simeon Boikov, the self-styled “Aussie Cossack” and a renowned palooka of middling intellect.
We’re told Boikov RSVP’d for the event after it was, quite foolishly, advertised on Facebook, and police confirmed at least one arrest for someone live streaming, arguing with staff, and “failing to comply with direction” at the venue. He was given a fine and told to go home.
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Tax claim whipped
A win against the tax man could never compare with first past the post in the Melbourne Cup, but for the team at global thoroughbred operation and horseracing team Godolphin, a fresh judgment out of the NSW Supreme Court can only be considered a win.
Godolphin Australia, founded by Vice President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates and ruler of Dubai His Highness Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, had gone into battle with the chief commissioner of state revenue over land tax.
The NSW tax man reckoned that Godolphin owed land tax totalling $1.44m on its two properties – Kelvinside, at Aberdeen south of Scone, and Woodlands at Jerrys Plains south of Muswellbrook, from 2014 to 2019.
The commissioner argued the wealthy group had not been using the land for primary production, which would have meant they were land tax exempt.
The commissioner argued Godolphin was rather using the land for breeding and training thoroughbred racehorses and spelling thoroughbred racehorses in between race events, with their sale ancillary to that and hence not primarily the business of primary production.
But Godolphin disagreed, arguing no land tax was payable because the properties were used in primary production and so were land tax exempt.
And the court agreed, with Godolphin off the hook for the tax bill and the NSW tax office being ordered to pay the thoroughbred operation’s court costs. Somewhat less than the $4.4m you get for winning the Melbourne Cup, but a win nonetheless.
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