Linda White (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

There are some events in life that make people reflect on where they were when it happened. I think of the assassination of JFK, the dismissal of the Whitlam government and the closure of Australian borders because of COVID. I remember where I was 22 years ago this week when the planes flew into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington DC late on September 11, Australian time. And I remember where I was the next day, when Ansett Australia was put into administration.

On the night of 11 September I was at the Holiday Inn at Sydney airport. I was there preparing to lead our members at Qantas in industrial action, something they had not done for a very, very long time. I remember groggily watching the television as I tried to go to sleep—I had to get up pretty early to start that industrial action—and it did not really register with me, when the first plane flew into the World Trade Center, what it would all mean. What it did mean, the very next morning, when I got up at 3 am, was that I realised we could not go ahead with our industrial action and that we would have to call it off. The Australian Services Union members called off their industrial action because, like the world, those airline workers on the front line were shocked. They had to greet people off planes who did not realise what had happened.

On that very same day, 12 September, the owners of Ansett Australia put the company into administration. I flew back to Melbourne airport, my home base, to be greeted by a large number of our members. The ASU had 4½ thousand members in the 16½ thousand staff; we had the largest group there. It became very clear that the board had decide the previous weekend to put the airline into administration, intending that it trade out by restructuring. That's what they had intended, but unfortunately, their decision coincided with September 11. They appointed PricewaterhouseCoopers as administrators. I have to be clear that it was the first administration I had ever been involved in and, in fact, it was one of Australia's largest administrations. We had to go into action because we had to get proxies from our members—4½ thousand of them—from around Australia. We did not have the sophisticated email systems or the like and the proxies all had to be signed by the various staff creditors, the 4½ thousand of them, and we had to get them within five days. I pay credit to our lawyer at that time, who is now the member for Melbourne, Mr Bandt. It was devastating for people because two days later, on 14 September, as a result of the turmoil across the world following September 11, the administrators made a decision to shut the airline, to stop it from flying. Ansett was owned at that time by Air New Zealand, who in turn were owned by Singapore Airlines. They did what every airline often does and went back to base and decided that Ansett could not be part of their future plans.

It is fair to say the airline industry in 2001 was suffering difficulties. I recall coming to this place to try and get a meeting with the Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, to express our concerns, but of course we were rebuffed. There was no time to talk to workers. We were unimportant.

I could go on and on about the Ansett administration, but I can say that it was devastating for a range of workers. For a short moment there was a buyer, but that buyer, Tesna, dropped out in March 2002, and the last flight by Ansett was on 4 March 2002. Today I wear the badge of a flight attendant from Ansett, who on that night gave me her wings.

It took 10 more years for those workers to be paid out after the collapse of Ansett. They had 14 payments— (Time expired)