Qantas protectionism: Albanese and his executive have fallen slack and complacent, even lazy

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with Qantas CEO Alan Joyce as they attend the Qantas 100th Gala Dinner in March.

It might have been apt had Alan Joyce’s departure from Qantas been cancelled at the last minute, put off for a day or so with empty apologies from the carrier’s management announced over a barely audible public address system.

As it was, Joyce left 10 Bourke Street, Mascot two months early with his $24 million golden parachute now under review from the board amid a mountain of flight diversionary size of outrageous behaviour including industrial relations brutality, customer service shenanigans, slot hoarding at Sydney airport (the practice of booking flights for departure and arrival that are subsequently cancelled), and a lawsuit over the sale of tickets to cancelled or ‘ghost’ flights where the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is seeking a record $250 million fine.

Last Friday ACCC Chair, Gina Cass-Gottlieb, told ABC Radio, “We consider this should be a record penalty for this conduct.

“The ACCC is on a path of wanting to substantially increase the penalties that large corporations in relation to serious misconduct pay for failing consumers. So this is going to be an important test for us.

“We consider these penalties have been too low. We think the penalties should be in the hundreds of millions, not tens of millions for breaches of keeping consumers accurately informed so that all members of our community understand what they are paying and what they are getting.”

Ouch.

Alan Joyce in 2019.

The marketers would call this brand damage, but the national carrier is not a Mars bar.

Mars bars have competitors who all enter the marketplace on even terms. There are Crunchies, Flakes, Cherry Ripes and my personal favourite, the Chokito. But what if the government sat down with the Mars family and contrived a plan where there are only a small number of Chokitos available and when they run off the shelves, people will have to pay more for a chocolate bar that they don’t much like?

That effectively is what has happened with the Albanese Government’s decision to reject a bid by Qatar Airways to add 21 weekly flights to the 28 it already operates between Europe and Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne.

The proposal from the Qatari national carrier would have added an estimated one million seats annually to and from Australia.

The Qantas board might reflect that, with the exception of some recent buffeting of the Qantas share prices, efforts to restrain competition in the aviation sector are paying off for shareholders, but it leaves the Albanese government to answer the salient question, why should an airline, any airline in Australia, receive government protection which patently drives the price of domestic and overseas travel in the stratosphere?

National Labor President and former Treasurer, Wayne Swan believes the decision should be revisited.

“These things are negotiated, government-to-government from time to time,” Mr Swan said on Nine’s Today program on Friday. “An appropriate review where things are, given all these revelations, would be good.”

We are going to have to play a little Cluedo to try and get to the bottom of the decision. Was it Albo in the Lodge with the mobile phone? Was it Transport Minister Catherine King with an internal memo in her ministerial office?

Transport Minister Catherine King at Parliament House. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The answer, in part, may be found in a letter dated 10 July from Minister King acknowledging the hurt and injury allegedly suffered by five women suing Qatar Airways over their appalling treatment at Hamad International Airport in Doha where they were subjected to body cavity searches. The letter signed by King ends, “the government was not considering additional bilateral air rights with Qatar Airways”.

Those grammatically inclined will note the past tense.

While that instance, reported widely in Australian media, may have been one reason for the minister to reject the Qatar bid, there are others.

Minister King has said her decision was based on a “need to ensure that there are long-term, well-paid, secure jobs by Australians in the aviation sector.”

In other words, protectionism. Worse, it is a decision to protect Qantas who have already acknowledged that they will be unable to keep up with demand for international passengers for at least five years. Necessarily, this leaves Australian consumers paying exorbitant prices for overseas travel.

In other words, it was a bad decision made unilaterally by a minister for the wrong reasons.

Those of us who believe in good governance will always come back to one particular point. This was a decision that should have gone to cabinet but for reasons that are yet to be explained, did not.

A decision like this has an impact on a number of ministries beyond transport. The decision has consequences in terms of foreign affairs, in industrial relations and in the broad super ministry of Home Affairs.

While the Opposition will be conducting a forensic exercise, we are not looking so much at whodunnit. Rather, why was it not done better?

As a general rule, and as anyone who has been a member of a board or on a committee of management knows, putting a decision like this to a group is a means of rubbing off the burrs, playing devil’s advocate, contemplating the political considerations and providing a broader view beyond the scope of the minister’s remit.

It’s what is called good cabinet government.

We remember the governments fondly who practised good cabinet government. Hawke-Keating. Howard.

It went missing during the Morrison government and the Coalition paid a heavy price as a result in last year’s federal election.

Good cabinet government was an early hallmark of the Albanese executive. In those few months, it was everything the Morrison government was not. It’s no surprise that polling, for what it is worth at that point in the electoral cycle, put the PM’s approval ratings and support for the Labor government higher than it had been at last year’s federal election.

Similarly, it should come as no surprise that the support is coming off the boil. Forget the nonsense of political honeymoons. Albanese and his executive have fallen slack, become complacent, even lazy.

Good executive government is about process. It is about fervent, even angry debate within the walls of the cabinet. When these processes are not followed, uproar and scandal are never far away.