Anthony Albanese’s life is beginning to sound like the theme song from The Beverly Hillbillies, a rags-to-riches, fish-out-of-water fable that gives rise to an amendment to the beloved jingle: “He said Copacabana is the place he wants to dwell, so they loaded up the trucks and moved to Terrigal.”
Cash for tickets, points for upgrades is the mantra for the seasoned traveller. Social flotsam, such as you and me, is required to accumulate frequent-flyer miles or pay big money to get to the promised land up the front of a Qantas burner.
Who knew it could be as easy as getting the Qantas chief executive on the blower to request a speedy transfer from cattle class to seat 1A? At least that is what the Prime Minister is alleged to have done on numerous occasions by Joe Aston, former columnist at The Australian Financial Review (his Rear Window column was the only thing worth reading in the Nine newspaper) and author of The Chairman’s Lounge.
If only Bob Carr knew about this. As Australia’s foreign minister, Carr famously moaned about the quality or lack thereof of the pyjamas supplied in business class and pined for a sneaky upgrade to feel the lush 100 per cent cotton sleep garments doled out in first class.
Bob seemed blithely unaware of the Qantas cheat codes. As an old Labor warrior, he should’ve understood that basic Marxist class theory tells us that capitalists own the means of pyjamas, the bourgeois buy the pyjamas, while the proles fight and die over the haberdashery.
Bob, Albo and just about anyone who has ever entered the parliament as an elected member enjoy the benefits of the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge, a sort of latter-day freemasonry where captains of industry and politicians mingle with or without funny handshakes.
What goes on behind the nondescript doors in Qantas terminals that simply read “Private”? Naked morris dancing? Cat juggling? I don’t know, but for all the opulence and influence there remains the particularly terrifying prospect of senator Lidia Thorpe bursting through the door at any given moment.
Amid one of the all too frequent Labor brawls during the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years, Albanese offered the comment – more a lamentation – that he “liked fighting Tories. It’s what I do.”
It is possible that the Prime Minister had decided it best to fight the enemy from the inside and, where air travel is concerned, from the pointy end of a Qantas A380.
What’s the difference between a full-blown scandal and a mere political bagatelle? About four days, and this one may blow over by the weekend.
The opposition has been like a dog chasing cars, both exhilarated in the hunt but vaguely uneasy about what would happen if it actually caught one. There is a deep sense of bipartisanship when it comes to enjoying the perks of office and both sides are gathering ammunition as we speak.
Opposition transport spokeswoman Bridget McKenzie told Sky News on Sunday “the only one (sic) with the answers” to questions raised by Aston’s allegations “are Anthony Albanese and Alan Joyce. So, we need to get them in front of a Senate inquiry.”
Only we have seen this film before, many times.
In 1992, Keating government treasurer John Dawkins was pondering whether to appear in front of a Senate inquiry into the Australian Loan Council but his boss was having none of it.
“I can assure you that there will be no House of Representatives minister appearing before a Senate committee of any kind while ever I am prime minister,” Keating said in the House of Representatives. “Whether the treasurer (Dawkins) wished to go there or not, I would forbid him going to the Senate to account to this unrepresentative swill over there.”
From that defiant statement we have a new and improved term to describe the Australian Senate that has lived far longer than its context.
Peter Dutton has refused to attend Senate inquiries, as did incumbent Labor Transport Minister Catherine King last year. Joyce is now a private citizen who is well within his rights to tell said swill to take a long walk on a very short runway.
“Nobody really could understand why the Prime Minister overrode the decision of Catherine King to allow Qatar in. If Qatar was in today, if Prime Minister Albanese hadn’t decided to support his mate Alan Joyce, I think we would find ourselves in a position where we have lower airfares today because there would be more competition,” the Opposition Leader told a gaggle of media on Tuesday.
The reason Qatar Airways was prohibited from expanding its number of flights to and from Australia was because of a particularly unpleasant episode on the tarmac at Hamad International Airport in October 2020 when dozens of female passengers, including five Australians, were bundled off a Qatar Airways jet and bundled into ambulances and roughly strip-searched at gunpoint.
The ordeal suffered by the women is the subject of legal proceedings. A Federal Court rejected the claim on jurisdictional grounds and an appeal is pending.
The opposition also would do well to remember that Qatar (not the airline but the country) is a home away from home for Hamas and its billionaire leadership, although there are fewer on the ground now than at this time last year. The Qatari government continues to support Hamas.
Regardless of the duration of this particular embarrassment, the sense that Albanese is a working-class hero turned Tory-fighting superhero has taken a bit of belting. As the Prime Minister is sidelined again by another self-inflicted injury, temporarily AWOL, it brings to mind the advice of a friend and former Labor political operative who believed any government could thrive provided there were three talented people in the cabinet.
“What if there were four?” I asked him.
His brow furrowed as he considered his response. “I don’t know. It’s never happened before.”
Albo is a class warrior. Which class? Why first, naturally.
Jack the Insider is a highly placed, dedicated servant of the nation and a columnist at The Australian.
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