Qantas chairman Richard Goyder right in calmly batting back the hysteria

The hysteria over Qantas has probably – hopefully - reached its high-water mark with the entirely bi-partisan assault on chairman Richard Goyder on Wednesday.

Newly appointed Qantas chief executive Vanessa Hudson at Sydney Airport. Picture: Britta Campion / The Australian

The hysteria over Qantas has quite probably – hopefully - reached its high-water mark with the entirely bi-partisan assault on chairman Richard Goyder Wednesday.

Thank goodness that, with the full support of the airline’s major shareholders, he resisted their

‘advice’ to fall on his sword.

To have done so would have not just been very silly, but simply inappropriate, and more importantly a dereliction of duty as the company’s chairman.

Qantas has just switched CEOs. It is incumbent on the chairman – any chairman of any company – to provide support to the new CEO for a reasonable – at least 18 months - period.

This is even more critically the case, where like Qantas, the new CEO is replacing a ‘hero CEO’ who had reigned dominant for nearly two decades.

And this is again, yet even more the case when the new CEO Vanessa Hudson has huge two tasks ahead of her.

Qantas chairman Richard Goyder appears before an inquiry into Australia's bilateral air services arrangements in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

No, neither of them is the supposed ‘repairing the airline’s (terminally?) battered reputation’,

’regaining the trust of customer’ and the like.

When I hear and read these people saying they’ll never fly Qantas again, I’m reminded of all those people who were going to flee from Australia if Tony Abbott won. Or Morrison. Or Trump or Bush in the US. Etc Etc.

Mores the pity they all stayed to whine some more.

No, the idiosyncratically iconically named Hudson, has two real actual tasks ahead of her, and her team; and she and they need the robust and informed support of a united board under a calm chairman like Goyder.

Task one is to get on top of all the legacy issues from the Covid years, when Qantas – and it seems it needs to be continually stressed; are memories really that short? – was existentially threatened by government in Australia LIKE LITERALLY NO OTHER BUSINESS.

Not even Virgin, which nevertheless went broke, costing people billions.

The government ordered Qantas to close down – entirely for three months and then on-and off to varying degrees for 18 months after that – and snatched the staggering sum of $25bn of revenue away from it.

In return the airline ‘got’ just $2.7bn.

But as I have pointed out – apparently no other journalist seems to know or can understand – the real aid to the airline was more like $600m.

Some $900m was paid THROUGH the airline to staff as JobKeeper – just like virtually every other business in Australia.

The biggest component, around $1200m, was straightforward payments to Qantas, operating as the ‘national carrier’ to fly passengers and freight through Covid.

What, were Qantas and its staff supposed to work for free?

As I’ve noted it was a miracle it survived. Even if - at the height of the truly existential crisis - it illegally sacked those 1700 workers. And will pay the appropriate price for that.

That points to Hudson’s second huge – task – the massive capital re-equipment program, which will go well past $10bn over the rest of the decade.

A word to those senators: do you understand that Qantas actually has to make a profit, and a

reasonable one at that, to keep flying?

Originally published as Qantas chairman Richard Goyder right in calmly batting back the hysteria