An Old Codger’s Thoughts & Opinions

As seen on the national TV nightly news on August 14th Qantas has unveiled three planes emblazoned with the 'yes23' logo, along with the message 'Qantas proudly supports Voice to Parliament’.

Qantas Airways is owned by its shareholders. Since 2008 Alan Joyce has been the Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of Qantas. In the financial year he received a salary of up to $4.3 million a year and $4.5 in bonus shares. In total he received almost $80 million in just 10 years.

The number of complaints against Qantas rose 68 per cent in the 2022 financial year. This period was marred by staff shortages and supply chain issues, which led to mishandled bags, delays and cancelled flights across the sector.

In the 2022 financial year, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission said Qantas was the most complainedabout Australian company and has now been crowned by consumer advocacy group Choice in its annual Shonky Awards. Whilst service provided by the airline continues to slide at the same time as air fares increase money is being spent in .

Qantas heavily continues to campaign, at a great expense on social issues that appear to have the ear of CEO Alan Joyce. It is one thing to campaign on social issues, but are those issues placed before Qantas shareholders before the program is commenced? What happens if a shareholder does not believe in that program? Do they have an avenue to present their own personal views?

After all there might be matters that an individual shareholder wants to support, they can’t just go and paint a sign on the outside of a plane as they feel free to do.

This is not to say that the programs promoted by Qantas are wrong or right. It has to do with creditability of the business and the financial responsibilities of the company.

It would be more fitting if that money spent went towards improving services for fare paying passengers. It is just too easy to continue to up the price of tickets without too much thought. It takes a long time to claw back that $80 million over 10 years that was paid to Alan Joyce.

Think of those dedicated staff that were sacked and replaced with overseas staff just to save money.

Incidentally, Qantas is not the only publicly listed companies such as ANZ, Wesfarmers, Woolworths, Coles, Commonwealth Bank, Rio Tinto, BHP and National Australia Bank are also spending shareholders money without gaining their views about social matters.

Truthful’s cousin, an Irishman came out to visit Truthful at Maleny. Whilst here Paddy decided to go to Brisbane on the train. He caught the bus from Maple Street and travelled to the Landsborough Rail Station. When the train arrived heading to Brisbane he got onto the train and sat down opposite another male passenger. This person was an Englishman. He was seated near a very attractive female.

Suddenly the train went through a tunnel, and as it was an old-style train, there were no lights in the carriages, and it went completely dark. Then there was a kissing noise and the sound of a really loud slap.

When the train came out of the tunnel, the attractive woman and the Irishman were sitting as if nothing had happened, and the Englishman had his hand against his face as if he had been slapped there.

The Englishman was thinking, “The Irish fella must have kissed the woman, and she missed him and slapped me instead.” The woman was thinking, “The English fella must have tried to kiss me and actually kissed the Irishman and got slapped for it.”

And the Irishman was thinking. “This is feckin great, to be sure. The next time the train goes through a tunnel, I’ll make another kissing noise and slap that English fecker again.”