Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Jobs and Skills Summit was a meeting of our nation's best and brightest. However, Qantas CEO Alan Joyce was also there. Mr Joyce has decided it isn't enough that he's ruined our national airline with his extreme antiunion agenda; he wants to weigh in on our national industrial relations system as well. Mr Joyce has attacked the tripartite agreement reached on multiemployer bargaining by saying: 'What you don't want is the pendulum swinging too far in either direction on industrial relations.'

If you want to see how far the pendulum has swung towards employers, just look at Alan Joyce's Qantas, a company which illegally sacked 2,000 workers and replaced them with an outsourced workforce so underpaid that they can't fill the jobs, a company which took a $2 billion handout from the Morrison government and then announced a $400 million share buyback the very next year, a company which threatened that it would rip up its flight attendants' agreement and give them a pay cut of up to 50 per cent. This is what a flight attendant told me about Alan Joyce's conduct: 'I have found myself breaking down, to the point I had to seek medical and professional help.' And a Qantas baggage handler said: 'It is like walking on broken glass every day every week, not knowing when you're going to get cut'.

Alan Joyce has the audacity to complain about workers getting too many rights. He should resign. The fact that the opposition is taking Alan Joyce's side in this matter is simply a disgrace.