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

I ran into Qantas CEO Alan Joyce here in Parliament House earlier today. I'm told he's hosting a dinner tonight in his honour, although my invitation appears to have met the same fate as many customers' luggage—it's gone missing! Far more importantly, Qantas workers and their unions are also here today. They're here to ensure people in this building are well informed about how Qantas has degraded and dehumanised its workforce.

After years of outsourcing and cost-cutting, Qantas is hollowed out, a husk of its former self. He illegally outsourced 1,700 ground handlers at the same time those opposite gave him $2.7 billion to keep his workforce together. He offshored engineering and maintenance, and what a disaster that's been. Joyce has outsourced flight attendants across 14 different companies to get rid of what he's called 'legacy conditions', because these days at Qantas secure work and fair pay are just a distant legacy of the pre-Joyce era. In fact, Qantas's workforce is divided across 38 different companies, a legal loophole to suppress wages and conditions. Highly skilled workers in some of these outsourced companies are getting paid wages as low as $23.41 an hour in some of the lowest paying jobs in the country.

Qantas is unrecognisable today as the spirit of Australia it once was. It's the most complained about company in Australia. The cancelled flights, the lost bags, the safety incidents, the ancient planes—the company has become a joke. Unfortunately, it's Alan Joyce who's laughing, because he's leaving with a $25 million bonus while Qantas workers and the travelling public are left wallowing in the mess he's made.