Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to do something different today. I would like to quote from an article in yesterday's Australian Financial Review by Joe Aston titled 'Rear window: How low will Joyce go'. I will go word for word with his words, not mine:

The decision by Qantas in recent days to banish TheAustralian Financial Review from its lounges and inflight Wi-Fi network is only what we've come to expect from our national carrier remade in the image of Alan Joyce.

It is, of course, the second such wobbly he's chucked in 10 years. In 2014, Joyce yanked all Qantas advertising from TheSydney Morning Herald and TheAge …

It's an incredibly petty act that actually bears out what we've been saying all along about the corrosion of Joyce's leadership.

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Remember, the most important thing to Joyce isn't money. He's made $130 million, so he doesn't need any more of that. The most important thing in the world to Joyce now is what other people think of him.

In his mind, clearly, he has constructed a heroic image of himself as the saviour of Qantas. He truly believes this.

Indeed, he may be incapable of believing anything else.

This is why Joyce makes statements that come across as comically self-unaware. He cannot express gratitude for the Australian government handing Qantas $2.7 billion during the pandemic. He even goes as far as claiming Qantas "ended up getting very little government support". He is unable to acknowledge that taxpayers helped rescue Qantas because it is incompatible with his conviction that he alone rescued Qantas.

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All of this delusion is enabled by Joyce's chairman, Richard Goyder, from whom Joyce garners sympathy by playing the vulnerable teenager. Goyder is fully signed up to all of Joyce's narratives. The duo exhibit all the dynamics of an enmeshed family. It is frankly creepy.

I have a lot more to say about this, and I will. I do wish that the new CEO can bring this once proud Australian icon back to its former greatness, because he's destroyed it.