The Chaser Report - Alan Joyce's Anti-Competitive Benefits

Episode Date: September 11, 2023

As Alan Joyce makes his departure from Qantas, Dom and Charles unpack the many perks he will receive in parting. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Charles, are you struggling with low blood pressure? Are you finding that you're lethargic, you have no energy? I do find that when I stand up, I get dizzy. Yeah. What you need is some rage, and I have the perfect thing to induce rage in not just you,

but all of our wonderful listeners today, Alan Joyce. Oh, yes. Oh, great. So this is like, this is both a podcast and good for your health. Yeah, primal scream therapy, essentially. And Charles, I've always said that the Daily Telegraph is a fine newspaper with excellent journalistic traditions. Really? On the rare occasions that I agree with it, more in a moment. So, under the headline, departing Qantas boss Alan Joyce's new life revealed. Oh, yeah.

The telly has provided what the nation wants, which is even more reasons to hate Alan Joyce. Where to begin. Not only has he got something like $125 million income since he took over his chief executive in 2008. Oh, my God. $125 million. That's almost enough for a business class seed in Qantas. That's true. That then gets cancelled.

The perks are quite extraordinary. Guess how many years he gets free flights for? Oh, he gets free flights? Guess for how many years? I don't know. Like, I don't know, two years? 20. 20 years.

He's going to get 20 years of free flights and not just a couple. He gets four international flights and 12 domestic flights for each year that he's been in the leadership. It seems like... That sounds like a rule he wrote. Yeah, I'm sure it was a rule that he wrote. He's also getting a $3.5 million bonus this year for his outstanding performance in completely destroying the company's reputation. A flight attendant has said, well, flight attendants can lose their bonuses if they damage reputation of Qantas. Should I and Joyce not perhaps be subject to the same rules?

Is this a rule that applies to all Qantas employees? Like, if you work as a pilot or a steward for 20 years, does that mean you also get four international free flights a year and three years of service? I don't know for sure, but it seems unlikely that the rules are the same. Well, maybe that's why they got rid of all the baggage handlers, because occasionally baggage will get lost, does hurting Qantas' reputation.

So they sacked them all and replaced them with cheap contract labour. Admittedly, that massively made the problem worse, but they weren't Qantas employees. And so therefore they didn't have to give any of the purse. That's right, and they weren't hurting Conner's reputation. No. Technically speaking,

they were hurting the reputation at the third-party baggage handling company. So there you go. He's been planning a trip to Antarctica. He's going to go to Dublin. He's also doubling the size of his apartment in the rocks. Well, you need that. Because he's going to be there more.

That's right. He'll be there more, except when he's flying. Because he's not leaving Australia. Australia's been very kind to Alan Joyce. He bought his neighbour's apartment in the Cove apartments. You know, the fancy Harry Siderlander apartments in the rocks. So he's knocking down the wall. and making it a six-bedroom, six-bathroom apartment.

See, this is the thing, Dom. Like, you say, oh, we should be angry about this. But actually, frankly, I think that good on him. Good on, you know, he's pulled himself up by his bootstraps. And what we should be doing as fellow workers in solidarity with Alan Joyce is demanding the same treatment for everyone else. Oh, from our boss. Instead of pulling down a tall poppy.

Oh, I see. What we should be doing is we should be lifting everyone up. Are you a lifter or are you a... Lifting everyone up to the same $3.5 million bonus a year. That's a great idea. You know what I mean? Like, we shouldn't criticise it. That's good.

That means that Condus has good employment conditions for its workers. For one of its workers. For one of its workers. But also, I mean, Charles, think of the migrant success story. Yes, exactly. He should be on posters. You can come to this country as a white man and succeed. Yes.

Extraordinary. Which no one ever thought. Yeah, it's not part of our national identity, is it? Completely shattering all of our misconceptions, absolutely. And, I mean, look at him now. He's the chair at the Sydney Theatre Company, until they presumably dump him shortly. Presumably, like, the one thing the Sydney Theatre Company has to do is sell seats.

Oh, yeah. Will they suddenly become unavailable? I was wondering why their plays have been running so late. Yeah, it's been cancelled. And out of timetable order. Yeah, yeah. So, look, Alan Joyce will continue to be a thought on the site. And thank you to the telly for really annoying us all about the extra perks of this undeserving rich man gets.

And in the hope that we don't ask the same questions of Rupert Murdoch. What would you spend $125 million on? Like, what is it? You'd be buying unnecessary apartments with harbour views. I mean, from what I understand, I don't want to pry. But I think it's just him and his husband. I don't know at what point you go, well, we've got three bedrooms. You probably need an extra three.

Knock down the wall. Buy next door. I mean, don't... I don't imagine they'd have many friends, though. Like, it's not like they're going to... Like, who would... I suppose people who are grateful or who are wanting to get a chairman's lounge. Yes, and, well, it's going to be like a little chairman's lounge in the sky, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah. I guess also the after-party at STC. Yes. None of the actors will be seen dead going up there, but the rich people might. Presumably, it's not so much being friends with Alan Joyce. It's more getting access to... Well, to the flight. It could give you his free flight.

It's the only way you can actually get a... See, this is the clever thing Alan Joyce has done in negotiations. And probably $125 million is enough to actually buy friends, isn't it? This is the genius of his deal, right? He didn't ask for flights to the value of X dollars. No. It was an international flight. So they could charge $100 million for that flight, and he'd still be entitled to it.

That is good negotiating. Charles, that's very good negotiating. Yes. Well, that's why he was paid the big back. So in a moment, let's look at the whole Qatar airway. thing because if there's one thing Alan Joyce has delivered, it is shareholder profits, right? He's managed to make Qantas deeply uncompetitive.

See, you say what is delivered is Qantas profits. It's a very strange definition of the word profits because, as I understand it, they've made $2.4 billion. $2.4 billion profit, of which $2 billion comes direct from taxpayers in the form of subsidies that were made during COVID. But, Charles, this is the genius. support he's done. And look, the thing that I'm increasingly seeing, right? And it was a great article about it. I read just yesterday is that Australia is actually becoming. And this is where the right

and the left are increasingly agreeing. It's a crony capitalist society. We're not a neoliberal society. Oh, no, good. No. It's all about how well you can lobby the government. There's no other game in town. The only way to make these massive super profits is to cozy up to the government. And that's where Alan Joyce has done so well. And to me, well, some might say it's uncompetitive. Some might say that the consumers are copying it through coals and woolies and Qantas and Virgin and every other, you know, all the telcos, every company that we deal with, it's basically an oligopoly, that buys influence with the government. Yes. But I just say, where do we buy influence with the government? Yes, that's right.

Well, this is, this is same as, you know, are you a lifter? Like, do you want to just cut down and criticise or do you just get with the program? It's a system that works. Except reality. I mean, at the point where you're knocking down the wall and adding your neighbours, Penhouse to your own. The system's working for some. He had a go. Alan Joyce had a go and fucking hell did he get a go. Yeah. The Scott Morrison system. So this is the thing we need to work out. I mean, we need to join Charles. So what you're saying is to all the sort of

public servants who, you know, are not getting bad pay rises and, you know, the government's actually fighting them to, you know, on these 2.5% per year pay rises. Yeah. Because, you know, we, quote, unquote, don't have enough money, what they should instead be doing, like these teachers and nurses and all those sorts of things, is instead running an airline and, like... No, they don't have to run it. We need the teachers, what we need to happen, Charles.

Oh, but they should, they should privatise. They should privatise themselves and then sell back their services at an inflated price to the government. This is the problem with the education and health system. Yes, it's not private enough. People are still directly employed by the government. What we need is, well, I'm not going to say PWC, because if you push it too far, eventually there is a backlash,

just Qantas and PWC, but up to that point, right up to that point, you just run a very profitable consulting company. Yes. You charge far more for the same services. Yes. And everyone takes a little healthy scheme off the top. And when the Liberals are in power, they congratulate themselves because they're boosting up their class allies,

and that's just nakedly what they do. When Labor's in power, they do the exact same thing. Yeah, but feel a bit guilty about it. I feel a little bit guilty. But then they feel better because they feel that their moral superior the alternative. So either way it works, I just think why aren't all the teachers in the whole of Australia forming a big corporation? Yes. And having like partners and senior managers and they could all be called managing director. So all of your child's teachers, your

kinky teacher, my child's kindi teacher would be a managing director. Yeah. And she would be on $300,000. Managing director of excellence. Of excellence. Yes. And she'd be getting at least 300 grand from the government. And a free flight. And of course, free flights. You're kidding me. And actually, Maybe free flights to school each day. Like it would be a little... But they should build an airport just at the back of the school. And what they need to do, per Qantas, they need to do what Qantas does. They need to have special lounges in every school that the politicians' children can go to.

They have like Xboxes and basically they get better marks, right? So what you do is you go to the parents and you buy them off. And that way, you know, if my child was lucky enough to get into the lounge, if I was influential enough, the system would be unable to be changed because I would have been bought off. Yes, that's right. By a teacher corp. I love it. It's a very good model, which means, I mean, why aren't we, Charles, and I know this is awkward,

why don't we sit down with the shovel and with Batuta? Yes. And just have a cartel, have a satirical cartel. Mark Humphreys has dropped out of the running lately, but maybe we'll let him back in. And we say to the government, look, if you want to look, like, this is a healthy democracy where people make fun of the government, just tell us the things you don't want to be made fun of. Yes. And we'll give them perks.

In return, like we'll make fun of them in public But then have drinks, they can have free tickets to your shows It's all about the cronyism, you see? And I think actually Mark would make a perfect Alan Joyce-style frontman for this operation He'd be great, yeah, he could front it And I reckon we could buy him off with $125 million And for free flights a year

Possibly even less, he might go for The Chaser Report Now with Extra Whispers This is how the system works because actual competition, Charles, is for mugs. Who wants that? Who wants actual competition? I mean, this is the beautiful thing about right-wing economic theories.

It never actually works in practice. People are never really exposed to the market. You're actually buffeted and looked after by fat government contracts. Yeah, well, this is the thing. This is why Kerry Packer was such a pioneer. Yeah. Because he only ever entered regulated markets. That's right.

So he, you know, he owned a TV station and then used the power that that television station gave him to lobby the government, to change the rules in favour of television stations. Of course. Of course. You know, all those sort of cross-media laws and the foreign ownership laws. They are all, you know, packer written laws.

We should do the same thing for everything. For everything. I mean, look, have we learned nothing from America. But I sort of think we already have, haven't we, in Australia. Just about. I mean, if we learned nothing for America, where... Cafes and teachers are probably the two competitive markets. Actors should all...

I mean, if all the actors formed a job, giant corporation together. Yes. We need actors. You've got to have actors. You've got to have actors. Who would we get in our little sketches? Who would we get in our soapies and, you know,

Alan Joyce's STC, it'd be nothing without actors. But it's got to be that the actors are paid for by the government, isn't it? Like, I'm just trying to think. No, no, they're just, everyone invoices the government a massive amount of money. That's basically how it works. Yeah, right. I'm not entirely sure where the government gets the money from, but we never worry about that.

No. Because it seems as though... Well, you just blame it on Labor's big black hole. Yeah, and then when the right-wing party's power, you just massively increase the national debt while blaming Labor. It's a very good system. It's sounding very similar to American

capitalism. That's right, but we need to do a little bit more preaching about the benefits of the free market and saying that the job of the government is to get out of our way. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And let our... Because what you need is you need it to sound like you're doing the exact opposite. Yes, so we say abolish the

government. Yes. Abolish it. No government. It gets in the way. It hampers productivity and creativity. Except for the subsidies that pays. We definitely want to keep those. Well, you, because you want people to hate the government so that they, the government feels obliged to outsource it to you. Yeah, that's right.

That's right. And then to have, we also need fatter defense contracts in this country, when you and I should be defense contracts. Well, I've always said we don't spend enough on submarines in this country. No, no. And maybe, maybe we need some, you know, some things that float on top of the, the water as well. Some more boats, like dingies.

Dingys, yeah. Inflatables. We could get into, you should get the people who made that inflatables. avocado and do inflatable warships. Oh, that was the problem with it, wasn't it? I should have... Should have gone bigger. It should have been a defence avocado.

It should have been a defence avocado. You could actually, all you'd need on it is a weapon system, and that could have been a fantastic deterrent. I mean, if you were a refugee boat and you saw a line of floating avocados around Australia, you wouldn't be able to get past it. We'd confuse them to... You'd turn around, you think this country is ridiculous. You'd have the avocado line, couldn't you?

Yes. Without any space in between them, it's a very good idea. But what have we got smashed in battle? It would be smashed avocados. We smashed avocados? That's what's keeping our young people poor. Holy guacamole. Oh, God.

So the last thing, Charles, is the Qatar Airways. And I'm keen to get your thoughts on this because I'm a little torn. I'm a little torn about Qatar Airways. Because on the one hand, it's clearly the case that just allowing any airline, the ability to set up here. It doesn't matter. Like, we don't, there's no reciprocity, right? Like, Qantas doesn't need to fly through Qatar. Qatar is a blip on the map.

We don't need access to their domestic aviation industry. They don't have one. Well, but, I mean, they're very good at running slaves, though. This is the thing that's awkward. We could learn a lot from them. You know, their stadiums cost a lot less to build than our stadiums. Just put it their way. I mean, it depends whether you're paying compensation to the people who you kill along the way.

But if you're not, then, yeah, that's true. And this is the thing. The best airlines in the world, Charles, I've noticed, tend to be run by authoritarian microstates, right? So you've got Emirates, you've got Qatar, Etihad's apparently very good. Singapore Airlines is fabulous, fabulous airline. It tends to be government owned by an authoritarian government that wants to use it for soft power. Yes, absolutely. What earth did we privatise Qantas when we could have used it as basically a slush fund to try and promote Australia around the world?

But if Australia owned Qantas still, then... We just had solds the operation. We'd own it, but we'd out, because the government can't own anything anymore, remember? Yeah, but also there'd be a problem, which is it would make money. But the money that it makes is already from taxpayers. So it wouldn't work from an accounting perspective because you'd be funneling all this money into Qantas and then you'd just be getting the money back. And it would be very confusing for the Treasury because you'd be going, well, hang on, no, I'm trying to get rid of this money. Yeah, I'm making money.

But actually, it's all coming back to me. Yeah, no, you're right. You're right. That wouldn't work. So Qatar Airways basically wants to set up, you know, and have the right to fly. From what they want the right to do primarily is not only more flights, but also the right, whatever that next freedom level is, where they can fly directly from Australia to say America, where you'd be able to fly Qatar Airways straight from Sydney to Los Angeles. So what is wrong with it? It's anti-competitive.

It hurts our, it hurts our domestic aviation industry. No, it's anti-competitive because it means Cornus has competition. That's right. They don't want, they're anti-competitive. When I say anti-competitive, I don't mean, what I mean is Qantas is against competition is against competition. That's what anti-competitive means in the Australian market. It means Qantas doesn't have to have competition. So the Australia, A-Triple-C, the competition commission, is actually, it's all about cracking down on competition.

Yes. Oh, right, I don't see. It's different form of anti-competitive. It's easy to get the two terms confused. They're actually against competition. That's what they are. And that's what Catherine King has done. And look, what a brilliant way to justify it by bringing in the strip searches, which we've

course, appalling. You would never do that to airline passengers. You'd do that to teenagers at music festivals here in Australia. That's what you'd do. I do quite like travelling overseas. And the modelling that I saw was that by not allowing Qatar airlines, airline fees for international travel and now a thousand dollars more than they otherwise would be. Don't you think there's a little sort of, no, you're not seeing the big picture, Charles. You're thinking about like your bottom line, would you like to spend more money on overseas travel, what you're forgetting is that if this system worked properly, you'd be getting paid five times as much, you'd be getting free flights. So no one would be paying.

Oh, I say, yes, of course. For flights. And it would just be any flights. Any flights. So we don't have to worry. Yes. Your job would have, ultimately funded by the government, free flights. Doesn't matter what they cost.

That's for poor people to worry about. You wouldn't be a poor person in this scenario. No, exactly. See? Yes. Nothing. And the best thing about being rich, as far as I can tell, is that not only do you have lots of money, but you're never required

to spend it. That's the beauty of the system. You never required to spend it at all. You'd think with $125 million maybe Alan Joyce could pay for his own fucking fly. No, not a chance. Not a chance. He's never going to pay for a flight for the rest of his life. I can't see anyone letting him

live for another 20 years. So Alan Joyce, you know what? You've won. Congratulations. In the game of life, you are the winner. And the fact that absolutely everyone in the entire country despises you, because they're jealous, Al. I wonder whether he should become Governor General. Now you're thinking. Actually, in Irish, Governor General would be quite appropriate. Quite appropriate.

Our gear is from Road. We're part of the Aconoclast Network. Catch you tomorrow. I want to see you on a business class flight.