It’s not often that yet another Qantas scandal around its illegal behaviour gets trumped by a display of hubris and poor service by some other major company. Having walked around with targets on their backs for much of the year, Qantas’ executives and its three-wise-monkeys board of directors must be delighted that Optus has absorbed media attention for last week’s outage and its ensuing communications failure — complete with comparisons in the Financial Review of CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin’s response with those of the airline to its many scandals.
Bayer Rosmarin is now reportedly considering stepping down — which would instantly elevate her above the parade of clowns at Qantas, who have grimly clung onto their chairman’s lounge access, right up to Alan Joyce, the unflushable turd of Australian business, who was only pushed out, mere weeks from his retirement date, when the ACCC came brandishing multi-hundred-million dollar fines earlier this year.
Optus’ outage appears less related to Qantas-style behaviour — a blatant contempt for customers, a commitment to reducing levels of service, underinvestment as a key corporate strategy, and unlawful treatment of its employees — than human error and the grim fact that infrastructure, no matter how gold-plated, occasionally breaks down. Telecommunications, along with aviation, is naturally a core area in the relentlessly expanding area of “critical infrastructure” regulation by government — that once covered four sectors, but now extends to a mighty 11 — the primary effect of which has been to simply raise regulatory barriers to entry in sectors already prone to monopolies and oligopolies. Certainly, more than two decades of critical infrastructure meetings between industry and bureaucrats (I endured some in my former life), and steadily creeping regulation didn’t do much to protect Optus customers last week.
Bayer Rosmarin’s sins — sure to be forensically examined at the inevitable Senate inquiry today — are instead around communication, at which Optus undoubtedly failed, but for which another problem seemed to be that the company wouldn’t tell people what they wanted to hear, i.e. that their services were about to be restored, mainly because it had little idea itself. What they did reflect is a persistent theme about how out-of-touch senior Australian business figures can be from what their customers expect. That Bayer Rosmarin and her executives failed to learn from the savage criticism of Optus’ communication about its hacking a year ago says much about their poor grasp of consumer sentiment. So much for the neoliberal idea that markets are the ultimate democracy and somehow channel the needs and wants of the public better than a ballot box can.
But Qantas’ conduct was — once again — far worse. It stood down employee Theo Seremetidis who raised safety concerns — “namely the risk of workers contracting COVID-19 while cleaning and servicing planes arriving from China”, in early 2020, in the words of the presiding judge. Qantas graciously “acknowledged the findings of the NSW District Court” in response — rather than, presumably, announcing it was seceding from NSW and the nation-state of Mascot would henceforth be its home.
Qantas’ treatment of Seremetidis looks a lot like punishment of a whistleblower, as well as an attempt to ignore justified safety concerns. Its conduct is of a piece with its illegal sacking of 1,700 staff during the pandemic, and its alleged industrial-scale breaches of consumer law in relation to ghost flights.
If the ACCC is successful in its prosecution over the ghost flights — overcoming the airline’s asinine “we don’t sell tickets” defence — then the verdict will be in on the Alan Joyce-era Qantas: it was a relentless lawbreaker that engaged in unlawful conduct in relation to its employees, its customers and safety.
What will Qantas’ response to the Seremetidis decision be? Its usual strategy of relentless litigation, if necessary all the way to the High Court? If so, the claim of CEO Vanessa Hudson that somehow Qantas has entered a new and better era will be proven hollow indeed.
How’s your faith in the Australian business landscape these days? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
Theo Seremetidis needs to be nominated for the next Australian of the Year award. Theo took very seriously his responsibilities to protect the health and safety of his staff and customers of the airline. The actions of Qantas toward him were disgraceful. Theo certainly represents the true Spirit of Australia, much, much more than someone like Alan Joyce.
What constantly gets me Bernard in this interminable tsunami of news and complaints about the latest corporate scandal, is the failure of the commentariat (and I have to say, that seems to include you – and I am normally one of your most fervent supporters) to identify the underlying causes of this corporate malfeasance phenomenon.
The public in general seems to be happy to endorse a capitalist system (some will even accept the present toxic free-market version of this racket), and then they complain about the sort of behavior described in this article. Quite frankly, I don’t get it.
Today you complain about the way Qantas and Opus have conducted themselves. For a little less than half of my life, the services which both of these “organizations” (I won’t use a more appropriate adjective to describe these outfits as that might get both myself and Crikey into legal trouble), provide were provided by governments. Now, before readers start hyperventilating and reaching for their blood-pressure tablets, let me be the first to acknowledge that public ownership of these essential services was not perfect, yes, that’s right, I said it was “not perfect”, but at least it was the starting point for improvement. When things went wrong at the Postmaster General’s Department or at (government-owned) Qantas, and they did go wrong, we had a greater chance of being told what had happened. There was certainly no hiding behind “Commercial-in Confidence” type fig leaves; nor do I recall leaders of government-run instrumentalities walking away with multi-million dollar payments after leaving the place a smoking ruin. Never have I witnessed a greater example of “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”, than that which involved privatizing these and many other services in the hope that they would become ‘more efficient’. That whole exercise was worse than “Monty Pythonesque”.
Knowing human nature as I do Bernard, if we were to re-nationalize (and that process was done properly), these and other essential services, then I can almost guarantee that you will still have scandals to write about; however, I am firmly of the view that there would be fewer of them and the nature of the misbehavior you would be writing about, would be less blatant.
Bernard, as someone who makes a living out of exposing corporate and government scandals, I would have hoped that your main goal in life would be to put yourself out of a job. What I am suggesting is one way to take a step in that direction.
Not sure nationalisation would be any panacea, but there are obviously issues with Australia’s business culture including lack of or avoidance of sensible regulatory constraints, short termism vs. future value, rent seeking/lobbying, average reactive management and corporate authoritarianism.
By coincidence in a parallel universe i.e. political media, reporting and journalism by the same ‘elites’ in the ‘Canberra bubble’ clearly left UN Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, absolutely underwhelmed by their ignorance, being misinformed or influenced by too many offshore junkets…. keeping up the Oz stereotype…..
Well Drew, with the greatest of respect, somehow, after over 40 years of the (failed) neo-liberal experiment, I don’t know that privatization has been any sort of panacea (in a positive sense at least). Listen Drew, just in case I am missing something I must check with some of those ‘beneficiaries’ of this economic Shanghai-La to which you, by implication, refer. You know Drew, like some of the multitude of those who are sleeping in the doorways of shops along the main streets of any capital city each night. Or perhaps I could consult some of those who suffer from a mental illness and cannot access anything like proper care. The list goes on (and on and on and …..).
Drew, you seem to lament “Australia’s business culture …..”. Has it ever occurred to you that this “business culture” that you somewhat tepidly bemoan may, in fact, be integral to the very system that you appear to support? Capitalism has its own “business culture” and while there may be slight variations on it around the world, at its core is greed and selfishness. Pure and simple, Drew.
Err ‘Has it ever occurred to you that this “business culture” that you somewhat tepidly bemoan may, in fact, be integral to the very system that you appear to support?’
What are you talking about and how did you reach this conclusion?
I think yo mu both agree with each other but this is the problem with banging on about “neo-liberalism” (and religion).
It means different things to different people!
Sorry for my apparent lack of clarity Drew.
I interpret the first sentence of your first reply to my post, i.e.
“Not sure nationalisation would be any panacea, but there are obviously issues with Australia’s business culture including lack of or avoidance of sensible regulatory constraints, short termism vs. future value, rent seeking/lobbying, average reactive management and corporate authoritarianism.”
as a repudiation of government-owned and operated instrumentalities and if you like, a socialist economy where essential services are publically owned and operated in the interests of the community as a whole, rather than for the benefit of a select few greed-merchants. Your comment seems to me to imply that you believe that the capitalist system is in need of reform to alleviate or mitigate the problems that you mention. My view is that capitalism is beyond redemption. It is an extremely potent catalyst that fuels a basic and troublesome human instinct, which is greed. While we have capitalism, those behaviors that you complain about in that first sentence will always be with us. They are natural concomitants of capitalism.
As far as the second sentence/paragraph of your post goes; I think I understand what you are saying and if I have interpreted your comments correctly then I can only say that I quite agree with you.
Economics 101 A publicly owned monopoly is better than a privately owned oligopoly.
Both are inefficient but only one is profit maximising.
I would submit Maldinis that with careful and judicious management, the publically owned monopoly can minimize inefficiencies.
Inefficiency is the product of the size of an organisation.
Any organisation with more than one person is inefficient!
Inefficiency isn’t necessarily a bad thing as it creates work for people. The only issue is when inefficiency impacts delivery e.g. waiting for a doctor, and cost (not an issue for governments including because they don’t have finite budgets).
Why is creating work for people considered a good thing?
Pointless work pointlessly consumes limited resources.
Resources like leisure.
What personal definition of “inefficient” are you using here ?
What will minimise all the crap in the spectrum ranging from inefficiency to outright malfeasance, is transparency and accountability to the stakeholders.
Anyone with half a dozen functioning neurons to rub together can see that the privatisation koolaid binge was all about minimising transparency and accountability – while the ratresentatives were happy to abandon their public service obligations, the corporate sector made out like bandits, and a revolving door appeared.
Everywhere is Russia now.
Inefficiency in public services is generally a consequence of a universal accessibility mandate and a relatively small wage spread. It’s a good sort of inefficiency at a societal scale.
Inefficiency in private industry manifests as massive profits benefitting a few. It’s a bad sort of inefficiency.
The observation about the good powers of markets hit a nerve with me. I think John Howard started with his notion that markets are the solution to every aspect of human endeavor like the environment and wages. They are not. They are usually the worst way of hoping a problem can be rectified.
And bonuses. How long will it take for those running the joint to realise that paying huge bonuses to senior management to make short term profits is more likely to destroy a company rather than extend its long term viability.?
Think that was probably more the US fossil fueled Atlas-Koch think tanks which gained influence in the ’80-90s promoting ‘public choice theory’ of their influential muse, James Buchanan, known for ‘segregation economics’ behind the free market economics of Hayek, Friedman et al.; a form of corrupt nativist authoritarianism masquerading as socio-economic policy or, eugenics.
As good a description as any.
Why does everyone continue to give these scumbags a free pass? I don’t believe for a moment they figured they were advocating the best system; it was always just about class war.
Bernard Keane at his best ????. “Alan Joyce, the unflushable turd of Australian business” Ouch ???
That immortal phrase was coined by the Sainted Mungo of MacCallum, VALE & RIP.
His pellucid prose & political perspicacity was unmatched at the time and never since – the ponderous persiflage of pretenders like Grundle being not even a pale shadow of his wit & wisdom
“the unflushable turd”: Gold. Sol Trujillo, Alan Joyce, who else is getting paid millions to trash Australian companies?