Alan Joyce, Anthony Albanese and the opaque politics of schmooze.
The Qantas Chairman’s Lounge is not one particular lounge, but a network of them in every mainland state capital and in Canberra.to relax, graze, work and network in privacy and luxury before their domestic flights. Behind the black sliding doors, simply marked “Private”, the chosen elite can order from the à la carte restaurant menu, partake of bottomless premium wines and spirits, recline on designer armchairs and read the daily newspapers .
When it comes to Chairman’s Lounge membership … otherwise high-functioning individuals completely lose their senses. “Let’s just say it’s a very valued benefit,” former Qantas chairman Leigh Clifford concedes drily. “Some of the calls you get, and some of the pleadings, are unbelievable. People forget that it’s a commercial decision. I had one guy ring me up and say, ‘I’m going to take this further!’ I’m not sure who he was going to take it to after me.”
None of this made Albanese Robinson Crusoe in the parliament – far from it – but neither did that make it right. In all of these cases, Albanese was either transport minister or shadow transport minister, so he was accepting gifts cumulatively worth tens of thousands of dollars from one of the largest and most important stakeholders in his area of policy responsibility, creating at the very least a perceived conflict of interest regarding the independence of his decision-making.
Joyce was presenting an account of the situation that was hopelessly compromised by logical shortcomings, the first quite obviously being that Albo’s son was not a member of the government, nor was he an MP’s spouse. The second was that BHP and Rio Tinto did not regulate Qantas. They couldn’t deny traffic rights to Qantas’ competitors, defund the ACCC’s airline monitoring powers on Qantas’ behalf, or shower Qantas with taxpayer subsidies.
Qatar’s application was in the ether when Joyce met with King – and separately with Albanese – at Parliament House on November 23, 2022. Albanese then attended and delivered a stirring speech at Qantas’ centenary gala dinner on March 31, 2023 and Joyce also met with King at Parliament House on May 10. By April, Hrdlicka was worried that Qatar’s bid seemed to have stalled.
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