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

Today marks a very special day. I've never been so excited to see a CEO leave an entity as I am today. I shouldn't be getting up here boasting about this; this is a very sorry stain on our nation. I'm talking about Mr Alan Joyce from Qantas. For all of us who have travelled overseas, there's nothing greater than seeing the red tail with the white kangaroo on of that airplane waiting to take us home. But I do not feel that way about Qantas now. I think it's timely we should discuss this today in our nation, in Parliament House.

This is a CEO who has done so much damage to the most iconic brand in this nation setting sail—walking out with, I think, $24 million. I believe he sold 17 million shares back in June before the September report was tabled to shareholders. Somehow this is the same CEO who presided over a number of shocking, shocking things in this nation. We all know that when the previous government shut down the airlines and shut down aviation, they did it for the right reasons: to try to keep our country as safe as possible. There's no argument about that. But the CEO of Qantas put his hand out to take $2.4 billion of JobKeeper money—that was taxpayers' money, not government money. We know why it was done: to keep workers connected to the company. Then in the dark of the night he illegally sacked 1,700 below-the-wing full-time Qantas employees—and by 'below-the-wing' I mean baggage handlers and cabin cleaners.

They weren't sacked because of the pandemic—no, no, no! And not because Joyce had $2.4 billion to keep his employees connected to the company—no, no, no! It was because he and that rotten board at Qantas wanted to save a heck of a lot of money, so they outsourced those 1,700 jobs. The jobs were still there. The only thing is that there were new employees brought in on part-time and casual employment at some $12 or $14 an hour less, having to buy their own safety gear, because of Joyce and the rotten board, led by rigid Goyder—I said 'rigid'; something came into my mind! I meant to say Richard Goyder. And do we think we should be proud? Should we be happy because Alan Joyce has stood down? Let's get to the nub of it: those 1,700 workers went to the court. They won in the court—they were found to have been sacked illegally. So what did Joyce and the board of Qantas do? They threw millions and millions of dollars more of the company's money to take this to the Supreme Court. They lost again—once again, the workers were deemed to have been sacked illegally. It's now in High Court. And we think that this is a great company?

We should dig down a little deeper. What about those 8,000 ghost flights? Qantas, under Alan Joyce and the same rotten board that's there now, were selling airfares up to 47 days after they had cancelled the flights. I have to say this: in just about every business I can think of in Australia, you can go out there and put your hard-earned on the table to purchase something—I don't care if it's a screwdriver, an air ticket, a tyre or whatever it may be. And if for some reason you don't want it and you take it back—you might want a different model, you might have bought the wrong one—what's the first thing that happens? They say, 'Show your receipt and we'll return your money.' Qantas has $570 million of Australians' hard-earned money, spent buying airfares, and most of those tickets were cancelled because the flights were cancelled. But they say: 'We don't give you your money back. No, we'll keep it in credits. But not only will we keep it in credits; we'll lie to you. We won't tell you how much we have.'

It took a Senate inquiry with my great mate Senator Tony Sheldon in Melbourne last week to find that out. It was like dragging blood out of a stone; while Qantas said they only had $300-odd million, $570 million of Australians' money was tucked away in their bank while they announced a $2.8 billion profit. I'm not against profit, but I'm against lying and I'm against theft. This is the model that Alan Joyce and the board of Qantas have created.

But let's dig a little bit deeper, shall we? Let's look at the board of Qantas. Who is the chairman of Qantas? It is one Richard Goyder. A lot of the white-collar, born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-their-mouths, blue-rinse set love Richard Goyder. I don't love Richard Goyder. I don't know how he gets up in the morning, looks in the mirror and shaves, without cutting his nose off. Who in their right mind can wake up in the morning and feel good and go to work, saying: 'I've ripped millions and millions dollars off the Australian travelling public. I've illegally sacked 1,700 of our loyal employees, but God I feel good.' Then again, looking at what Mr Goyder is paid as the chairman of the board might help. It was a miserable $560,000 last year and a paltry $658,000 this year.

Richard Goyder is the same bloke who my friends at Woodside Energy have as their chairman. Woodside, it's a mark on you—and I've always spoken up for Woodside—that you only play him $723,000! That's up to Woodside, and it's their business, but I want to highlight that this bloke is not a decent human being. Goyder was also on the board of Wesfarmers, where his final payslip was a mind-boggling $12 million, and during his tenure at Wesfarmers he pocketed $90.1 million in salaries and incentives. This is the bloke who sits on the Qantas board. We might think that, because Alan Joyce walks away today, the Qantas brand is going to return to being the great icon that it once was in this nation. But how can it with the same man at the helm of the board? You can't wash your old 1960 ute and then sell off the bucket of nuts and bolts as the latest Cadillac. Don't try and fool us, Mr Goyder. Australians and the Australian travelling public will not fall for this rubbish.

Goyder has been ably backed up by a band of merry men and women who have sat on the board with him while giving Joyce the green light to go ahead with all the tactics and antics and theft from the Australian travelling public. I'll mention the other board members, though I don't know them from a bar of soap. There is one Maxine Brenner, a banker who's become a 'career director'. Those aren't my words—this is what I read about her. She also sits on the boards of Origin Energy, Telstra and Woolworths. If I was Origin Energy, Telstra or Woolworths, I wouldn't be seen within a bull's roar of anyone who sits on the Qantas board. But that's up to them. They're the ones that need to make that decision. If they feel comfortable at night, my God, how bad is this country going?

Another board member is one Jacqueline Hey, who's chair of the Qantas remuneration committee. Ms Hey rubberstamped Mr Joyce's pay rises and bonuses, as did all her other mates on the board. Ms Hey is also chair of the Bendigo and Adelaide Bank, and was a former director of AGL Energy and Cricket Australia. I don't know if they woke up or whatever, but, anyway, it's none of my business. She's been on the boards of a couple of banks. I don't have the greatest respect for banks in Australia either.

There is a real purple circle here in Australia, I can tell you. I suppose, if you're in the circle, you can pull in $200,000 to sit on a board, make decisions about illegally sacking 1,700 workers—that's 1,700 families on the rubbish tip the next morning—and then feel good about it. I was brought up better than that.

Another board member is Belinda Hutchinson. She joined the board in 2018 as a 30-year veteran of the financial services sector. My God. Michael L'Estrange is another board member. A former secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, he joined the Qantas board in 2016 and was involved in ticking off Joyce's pay rises and all this terrible behaviour. It says a bit more about the bloke—I wouldn't know him from a bar of soap—that Michael L'Estrange was also on the board of Rio Tinto. You might say: so what? He was on the board of Rio Tinto at the time they destroyed the Juukan Gorge, which we know is the only inland site in Australia to show continuous human habitation for 46,000 years. Seriously!

Then there's Todd Sampson, the Canadian-born marketing expert, who joined the board of Qantas in 2015. He's a regular on Gruen, the TV show. He may have insights, with a bit of luck, to give the new CEO a hand in reversing reputational damage.

But, through you, Deputy President, there are another two: Anthony Tyler and another fellow named Doug Parker. Seriously, I know I'll get support of my colleagues in this building about this. None of us in this building or in the other place could ever stand up and support the ratbag behaviour of Qantas under the CEO Alan Joyce since the pandemic, and none of us in here would ever support having the likes of Richard Goyder on any one of our boards, should we be lucky enough to have one.