In that same year, Joyce commissioned and issued a Deloitte Access Economics report detailing “the Qantas Group’s contribution to the Australian Economy”. Unsurprisingly, it is splendiferous, finding that Qantas is an economic keystone which contributes 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product. Why did Qantas feel the need to issue such a document? Well, let’s just say it’s come in handy over the years.

Loading

In 2018, Joyce found himself defending the fact that the airline, despite “transformation”, had not paid tax in three years. Nothing to see here. “Corporations tax is a tax on profits,” he condescended. “If you don’t make money, you don’t pay the tax.” And quite right he was. But Qantas profits bounce around erratically and quite conveniently.

A couple of years later, Qantas’ huge contribution to the national economy was augmented by its absolutely essential role in bringing home Australians stuck abroad. Between that and its contribution to the national economy, a $2 billion taxpayer handout to the airline was a no-brainer.

Except that Qantas didn’t bring many home, so it wasn’t. Qatar was the airline that flew most Australians home after Qantas parked its fleet in the Californian desert. Now that Qatar wants to add more flights, maybe reducing the cost of airfares a bit, Joyce is arguing that competition would kill the flying kangaroo and probably plunge the nation into penury. Don’t forget that 0.7 per cent of GDP!

But years of playing aerial acrobatics with the airline’s accounting is starting to catch up with the Irishman. Qantas was, until this past week, looking like it would hold onto the pandemic billions, hold onto customer credits issued due to COVID cancellations, and hold onto its uncompetitive position in the market.

Then Qantas was forced by public outcry to extend the life of credits for flights cancelled during the pandemic. They had been due to expire on December 31, meaning Qantas customers would have forfeited their money to the airline’s bottom line. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission is also alleging Qantas sold tickets it knew it couldn’t honour, and ACCC chief Gina Cass-Gottlieb wants the penalty to be something that can’t be absorbed as a regular cost of doing business. She’s hinted she wants a fine of more than $500 million.

An adverse Federal Court finding could wipe out any profit for the airline. Now, remember it was only last week that Joyce told us he was going to repay the pandemic handout with corporate tax. Perhaps that idea won’t fly: “If you don’t make money, you don’t pay the tax.”

Qantas’ troubles have leapt out of the financial press and into the mainstream because they’re hitting regular folk where it hurts: right in the cost of living.

Loading

Meanwhile, in bad news for Canberra, Alan Fels, the former head of the competition watchdog, is making sure that politicians can’t slink out of the Chairman’s Lounge unimplicated. Fels told ABC radio this week, companies should be looking after shareholders but the government should be looking after consumers, not companies.

That’s a painful lesson for a Labor government to be schooled on publicly. As Qantas chairman Richard Goyder told the Australian Institute of Company Directors, “the biggest challenges are poor decisions made and also reputational issues”. If only Albanese had been across the details of the Joyce to parliament, he might have realised – as prime minister – what a reputational risk the relationship posed.

Parnell Palme McGuinness is managing director at award-winning campaigns firm Agenda C. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens.