No point in Qantas butting heads with ACCC. It’s now time to move on

Bonza’s failure was a reality check for Qantas and it’s time to move on from its stoush with the ACCC.

Australian Competition Consumer Commission Chair Gina Cass-Gottleib.

ACCC chief Gina Cass-Gottlieb walks away with the bragging rights – and $100m; a very, even urgently, necessary outcome after the ACCC’s embarrassing ANZ-Suncorp debacle.

Qantas CEO Vanessa Hudson – and indeed more broadly the Qantas board and shareholders – draw a line on the past, and can now move on.

With one exception. Qantas still has to deal with the costs of paying the baggage handlers it was held to have illegally sacked through the Covid years.

Bluntly, brutally, if also a touch unfairly, there was zero point in Hudson, or the board, continuing to butt heads with Cass-Gottlieb and her ACCC over decisions taken by the previous CEO Alan Joyce.

Equally there was no point in Cass-Gottlieb looking a settlement gift horse in the mouth. Not when you can claim bragging rights – and an accompanying grovelling apology from Hudson. And, of course, the $100m.

Yes, that meant quietly dust-binning the always ludicrous attempt by the ACCC to paint what Qantas did in the chaotic days coming out of Covid as some sort of replay of the banks “fees for no-service”.

Every one of the 85,000 or so aggrieved passengers either got on another flight or got a refund. Compare that number, incidentally, with the one million passengers Qantas flies each week.

While also similarly dust-binning the idea floated when Cass-Gottlieb launched the action with all trumpets blazing that Qantas would be pinged for as much as $250m.

No, it’s now $100m. Plus $20m in payments to around 85,000 lucky customers who now emerge with having had something akin to their original flight anyway, or a refund, and now a nice little earner on top.

I might lament, but it’s a very lonely lament, that just occasionally I’d like to see matters actually litigated to a full and proper conclusion.

Qantas chief executive Vanessa Hudson

Did what Qantas did break the law? Or was the ACCC off on a – totally inappropriate – frolic of regulatory strongarming?

I have an inherent objection to regulators trying to write and enforce the law to suit themselves or the agendas of their people. I’d like them just to enforce the – existing – law.

I’d also note that Joyce gets a bum rap out of this. The tough decisions he took got Qantas through the lunacy of Covid.

But then, he’s probably not crying into his bank balance.

The collapse of Bonza is also a coincident timely reminder of reality.

Two realities.

The basic reality of business viability.

Bonza was always a fantasy. It proposed flying routes that nobody else did – because, they made no commercial sense. And on top of that, it offered cut-priced fares. Go figure.

Secondly, we are – at best – a two-business economy. Supermarkets: Woolies and Coles. Airlines: Qantas and Virgin (formerly Ansett). Even the banks would come down to two, if they were allowed.

Yes, two plus other odds and sods. Plus 21st-century digital.

But you can’t – yet -be transported in virtual reality.

Ask yourself.: who really got screwed?

Those Qantas customers who got to fly anyway; or, thanks to Joyce, were always confident of a refund?

Or those Bonza would-be flyers?

Originally published as No point in Qantas butting heads with ACCC. It’s now time to move on