Speaker 1: I think it's one of the best iff not deepest
Speaker 1: aviation job in the world and I'm verady honored that
Speaker 1: the Quantas bore it has selected me.
Speaker 2: For that role.
Speaker 3: Alan Joyce was once one of Australia's most admired business leaders,
Speaker 3: but by the time he left Quantas he had become
Speaker 3: one of the country's most hated men.
Speaker 4: Three point eight million dollars that is the eye watering
Speaker 4: amount former Quants chief Allan Joyce will receive in his
Speaker 4: final payout from the airline. The bonus, in the form
Speaker 4: of surging shares, comes two years after a string of
Speaker 4: incidents steeped the airline into reputational crisis, leading to his
Speaker 4: high profile departure.
Speaker 3: His final years at the airline were marked by illegal sackings,
Speaker 3: cancel flights with held refunds, and a collapse in public trust.
Speaker 4: Quantus has lost its appeal in the High Court over
Speaker 4: the illegal sacking of about seventeen hundred workers during the pandemic.
Speaker 5: Quantus has been fined two hundred and fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 5: and convicted for illegally standing down a worker during the
Speaker 5: pandemic after he raised concerns about the risk of COVID
Speaker 5: nineteen to staff cleaning aircraft from China and the Arible
Speaker 5: c is taking legal action against Quantus, claiming the company
Speaker 5: was selling tickets for flights it had already canceled.
Speaker 3: But in a new memoir, Joyce defends many of his
Speaker 3: decisions that made him a symbol of corporate arrogance and distrust.
Speaker 3: I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven am today
Speaker 3: former Quantus chief executive Alan Joyce and what he believes
Speaker 3: Australians got wrong about him and whether he accepts responsibility
Speaker 3: for the damage done on his watch. It's Monday, July
Speaker 3: twenty seven. Alan, You spent fifteen years running quantustan left
Speaker 3: to meet extraordinary public backlash that you were largely unable
Speaker 3: to respond to. So why did you feel the need
Speaker 3: to write this book and what is it that Australians
Speaker 3: have most misunderstood.
Speaker 1: About you the book? I wanted to write the book
Speaker 1: for some time. You know, as you read in the book,
Speaker 1: it's got full of my entire family history, my entire
Speaker 1: life about being a gay man and coming out as gay.
Speaker 1: It talks about all of the early days the Quantas,
Speaker 1: some of the high tension issues like the QF thirty two,
Speaker 1: and then it goes into the period, the last couple
Speaker 1: of years, the of the COVID period and what happened.
Speaker 1: Then I talked about it from my perspective of what happens.
Speaker 1: Put the facts down and explain the conditions and the background.
Speaker 1: People may not agree with me, still, I know that.
Speaker 1: I know I'm a polarizing figure where it was. Also
Speaker 1: put my side of that story and explain how we
Speaker 1: made those decisions from my perspective.
Speaker 3: Okay, So if we go to those last couple of
Speaker 3: years and we talked about COVID in particular, because from
Speaker 3: a public perspective, that's where things really sort of went
Speaker 3: off the rows during COVID, Quantus I legally sect eighteen
Speaker 3: hundred and twenty grand workers. The High Court ultimately found
Speaker 3: that Quantus acted unlawfully and the company has since fast
Speaker 3: one hundred and twenty million dollars in conversation and a
Speaker 3: ninety million dollar penalty. In the book, you still describe
Speaker 3: outsourcing those jobs as the rock call why And.
Speaker 1: I do say that, you know, when you look back
Speaker 1: to the period when the decision was made in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: we were starting at potentially the company going back grupt.
Speaker 1: We had to make a whole series of decisions to
Speaker 1: make actually up to ten thousand people redundant. I think
Speaker 1: around the world in aviation, our aviation related jobs, over
Speaker 1: two million people were made redundant. It was the worst
Speaker 1: period in our history, and we were fighting for survival.
Speaker 1: And I had I explained in the book, I had
Speaker 1: friends like nearly twenty five percent of management went at
Speaker 1: people I worked with for twenty years that were made redundant.
Speaker 2: I was in tears. They were in tears.
Speaker 1: It was horrendous and we did everything with that intent
Speaker 1: to save the company. Now I recognize that those eighteen
Speaker 1: hundred workers that was an illegal action.
Speaker 2: It was found to be against the law.
Speaker 1: But at the time in the book, I explained when
Speaker 1: we made the call, nobody thought it was going to
Speaker 1: be illegal. The legal advice we had was that it
Speaker 1: wasn't going to be It went to the board, it
Speaker 1: went to me, I went to the entire management team.
Speaker 1: Everybody thought we needed to do it. It wasn't something
Speaker 1: that we taught, we would we wanted to do. None
Speaker 1: of this was I'd say how heartbreaking it was, because
Speaker 1: just six seven months before that, but this was harding
Speaker 1: a massive amount of people. It was making record profits,
Speaker 1: record customer satisfaction, record employee engagement. But when when COVID happened,
Speaker 1: Enoch does and every airline for six and every airline
Speaker 1: had to make similar decisions. But nobody said out doing
Speaker 1: anything illegal. But the court found it that way. And
Speaker 1: I accept that.
Speaker 3: You believe it was the right call. But you're also
Speaker 3: right that headquarters nine, how quickly travel would return, it
Speaker 3: would have not have done it. Doesn't that suggest that
Speaker 3: it was based on an assumption that turned out to
Speaker 3: be wrong. So doesn't that mean it was the wrong call?
Speaker 1: Well, I think you know, hindsight's great, Daniel I say
Speaker 1: in the book, you know, you make decisions in real
Speaker 1: time and they're evaluated in hindsight, and I think that's
Speaker 1: the reality of a lot of things we do in life.
Speaker 1: I'd actually deport yourself in our position in the middle
Speaker 1: of twenty twenty when we made these calls, and at
Speaker 1: the time nobody thought that nobody knew there was going
Speaker 1: to be a vaccine, nobody knew that there was going
Speaker 1: to be a rapid rebound.
Speaker 2: So you have to make the.
Speaker 1: Decision with those that knowledge at the time that that
Speaker 1: knowledge at the time was the best decision you could make.
Speaker 2: Hindsight's great.
Speaker 1: If I knew everything that was going to happen later,
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have made that call. We wouldn't have had
Speaker 1: to make that ten thousand people rednded, We wouldn't have
Speaker 1: had to do that restructuring that we had at the time,
Speaker 1: and we wouldn't have had to made the whole season
Speaker 1: tough decisions. Unfortunately, we didn't have that foresight. We didn't
Speaker 1: have that material when we were making the decision. We
Speaker 1: had to make it with the information we had at
Speaker 1: the time.
Speaker 3: When the board is closed during the pandemic, quite of sudden,
Speaker 3: we had billions of dollars of customers money tied up
Speaker 3: in council flights. You wrote in the book that issuing
Speaker 3: credits was the only viable path, but quantasion terms said
Speaker 3: that customers were entitled to refunds, and around eighty percent
Speaker 3: of customers holding COVID credits were eventually found eligible for refunds. Yes,
Speaker 3: shouldn't that have been made clear to customers from the
Speaker 3: very beginning?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we got that wrong because we were in I'll
Speaker 1: explain why we did credits first, and I'll say why
Speaker 1: we got that one wrong. At the start, we had
Speaker 1: twenty two million buildings in the system, I think at
Speaker 1: the time, and when the borders started closing down, most airlines,
Speaker 1: including ourselves, not all airlines, but most referred to credits
Speaker 1: as a way of managing it because every single customer
Speaker 1: and issue could was different. Some customers may have had
Speaker 1: expired credit cards them, customers may have half an itinery
Speaker 1: use them. Customers had and their builkings through travel, so
Speaker 1: we didn't hold the credit card details. A lot of
Speaker 1: the international bookies were there, so it was extremely complex
Speaker 1: and the easiest way to do it was to convert
Speaker 1: the flight credits, which most airlines did now at the start,
Speaker 1: and we did say we got that wrong and making
Speaker 1: sure it was clear to customers that they had the
Speaker 1: choice for refunds, but we also had the call center
Speaker 1: melting down at the time because of all the disruption
Speaker 1: because it wasn't a signed for that, and the easiest
Speaker 1: thing was to ask customers would accept taking it in
Speaker 1: credit and then using it, and then over time the
Speaker 1: credits was chunky, and I then apologized for that, but
Speaker 1: over time we got it better and better and better,
Speaker 1: and eventually, you know, after one point six billion in
Speaker 1: credits that were there. By the time I'd left, that
Speaker 1: had come down to less than six hundred million, So
Speaker 1: a billion of the credits were used, and none of
Speaker 1: the quotest credits ever expire, And there's still over three
Speaker 1: hundred million. If your any if your listeners have a credit,
Speaker 1: there's still three hundred million of them there on the
Speaker 1: Quantus balance sheet and they still can use them today,
Speaker 1: So go back and find it, or go to Quantus
Speaker 1: and try and find it, because they're still usable.
Speaker 2: So by the end we did the right thing and
Speaker 2: go right.
Speaker 1: At the start, we didn't and it was messy and
Speaker 1: I regret that, but it was the nature of the
Speaker 1: situation we were in.
Speaker 3: Then there's the issue of the ghost flights saga, where
Speaker 3: Quantas continued to sell tickets on flights that had already
Speaker 3: decided to counsel and failed to promptly tell close to
Speaker 3: eight hundred and eighty four thousand passages their flights were off.
Speaker 3: Quanta says this was a system value and not a
Speaker 3: deliberate scheme, but the company admitted it benefited from retaining
Speaker 3: revenue and keeping customism might otherwise have booked with other airlines.
Speaker 3: Why should a reasonable person not see that it's quite
Speaker 3: as profiting from conduct in you was misleading.
Speaker 1: Well, because you know, well, it wasn't. It wasn't what
Speaker 1: we were accused of at the time. And I think
Speaker 1: subsequently that came out because there wasn't a fear for
Speaker 1: our service. Because you look at the data and I
Speaker 1: think got all of those customers and the best of
Speaker 1: customers either got a flight within an hour or two
Speaker 1: or the same day that they booped, and the ninety
Speaker 1: eight percent of the international customers got the same day
Speaker 1: or another. Airlines and the people in Quantas I believe
Speaker 1: did absolutely the right thing.
Speaker 2: They were trying to minimize customer disruption. They didn't do
Speaker 2: it for us to gain at the edge.
Speaker 1: Absolutely fundamentally believe that it wasn't egregious in any way,
Speaker 1: and they did it to try and help the customer
Speaker 1: and manage the customer and outcome. Of course the a
Speaker 1: trible c didn't see it that way. I accept that,
Speaker 1: but I think that the fact showed that they this
Speaker 1: was not egregious, This was not f b for no
Speaker 1: service in pact. All the customers either got a refund
Speaker 1: or they traveled and they traveled pretty close to the
Speaker 1: time that they went on. I would say it's actually
Speaker 1: it's interesting that even today, you know, Katara Airways, for example,
Speaker 1: is doing the stuff that we were accused of doing
Speaker 1: back then. And I'm sure the a Triple C looking
Speaker 1: at that because I think that is that's happening, and
Speaker 1: I hope their Triple see just as a look at
Speaker 1: Quantus cases on these things, but looks at a case
Speaker 1: that occurs on other airlines because of what's happening in
Speaker 1: the Middle East and with some of the flight's been
Speaker 1: closed down and started up.
Speaker 2: That's I think it's happening today.
Speaker 3: Still become the elite world of the Quantus chairman's lounge.
Speaker 3: Is it used to buy political favors. One of the
Speaker 3: most fascinating things that I guess the listeners would want
Speaker 3: to know about would be the chairman's lounge, and there's
Speaker 3: been intense scrutiny over it. Critics say that giving out
Speaker 3: free memberships creates serious conflicts of interest, potentially allowing the
Speaker 3: airline to buy political favors and favorable regulatory treatment. In
Speaker 3: the book, you say that's not the case, that it's
Speaker 3: just a relationship building tool, but these are relationships with politicians,
Speaker 3: judges and some of Australia's most powerful people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Daniel, But what I would say is that you
Speaker 1: know a lot of people of hospitality in different ways.
Speaker 1: We use an airline have the lounge, A lot of
Speaker 1: airlines have similar lounges. Virgin has one very similar that
Speaker 1: it allows politicians to use, might think and other customers
Speaker 1: and the vast majority of people that get access to
Speaker 1: the Quantas Chairman's Club are corporate accounts there, the PHPs,
Speaker 1: the banks and the big companies that give quotas a
Speaker 1: lot of business and it's related to the businesses that
Speaker 1: they give. And then of course there is the government
Speaker 1: and it's generally perceived on the government side and this
Speaker 1: is their call and it's generally perceived as long as
Speaker 1: they declare these gifts, it's regarded as acceptable.
Speaker 2: And if you've ever looked.
Speaker 1: Through the Register of Gifts, you know Quotas club players there,
Speaker 1: the Chairman's Club appeers there, but there's lots of other
Speaker 1: gifts and hospitality from a lot of other industries. In
Speaker 1: the book, I make the point out, Daniel, you know,
Speaker 1: if it was that strong of an influence, I think
Speaker 1: it's there for good commercial reasons, but that strong of
Speaker 1: an influence. The big things we wanted the government to do,
Speaker 1: changed the Quanta Sale Act, regular airports. We never got there,
Speaker 1: and there were big changes that I would have been
Speaker 1: I would have been unbelievably keen for, and I think
Speaker 1: it's giving us too much credit.
Speaker 2: That we got the quitar rights changed.
Speaker 1: I think the government made that decision for a whole
Speaker 1: series of other reasons. We know, you know, there was
Speaker 1: the issue with the women in Cantar and what happened
Speaker 1: with them. There was a lot of reasons around that decision.
Speaker 1: And if I thought it was what we did in
Speaker 1: my lobbying, I'd be claiming that I'd be saying great,
Speaker 1: that was my job. My job as CEO is to
Speaker 1: lobby the government to try and get Quanters's position. But
Speaker 1: I think it's given us too much credit, and there
Speaker 1: was a lot of stuff I didn't successfully lobby the
Speaker 1: government don which I had.
Speaker 3: In twenty eighteen, Quantas was Australia's third most trusted brand,
Speaker 3: according to Roy Morgan. By the end of twenty twenty
Speaker 3: two was fortieth. You often point to Quantas's financial survival
Speaker 3: and profitability as a measure of your success. Wasn't the
Speaker 3: collae see public trust be treated as an equally important
Speaker 3: measure of your legacy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that was terrible.
Speaker 1: As I say Daniel Indboog, you know I was thinking
Speaker 1: or retarding. In twenty twenty, I steped on the help
Speaker 1: caut us through the COVID crisis that was occurring.
Speaker 2: In twenty nineteen.
Speaker 1: Just before COVID, we had the highest customer satisfaction in
Speaker 1: our history, the high share price in our history, highest
Speaker 1: employee engagement. We were on the verge of having projects sunrise.
Speaker 1: I got that through the board for that to happen.
Speaker 1: We were one of the most trusted brands and COVID
Speaker 1: here US hit every airline for six including US, and
Speaker 1: every airline around.
Speaker 2: The world went through a similar hit.
Speaker 1: You know, we have a look in at Air New Zealand,
Speaker 1: probably one of the most trusted brands in New Zealand.
Speaker 1: It's now in the doldrums there. British airways up in
Speaker 1: Europe as COVID caused all of these problems with airlines
Speaker 1: delivering reliable servers, with airlines having flight credit issues, with
Speaker 1: airlines having to make a lot of people redundant, and
Speaker 1: that does hit the brand. But what I've no doubt
Speaker 1: about is because the quantest's financial success, because it's quant
Speaker 1: ability now to have teams like Project Sunrise Comic, which
Speaker 1: is initiative that we did, or quantests that have the
Speaker 1: biggest fleet order and its history on its way, new
Speaker 1: aircraft arriving every other month. Because I put in the
Speaker 1: biggest order of two hundred and ninety nine aircraft ever
Speaker 1: in Australian history, that brand will improve back to where
Speaker 1: it was. And I have absolute regret that we took
Speaker 1: that hit in COVID. I wish I had gotten out
Speaker 1: before COVID because there would have been all a high
Speaker 1: and had no COVID hit us for six. But I
Speaker 1: hit a lot of airlines for six and that was
Speaker 1: one of my biggest regrets.
Speaker 3: You win the book by describing the journey from the
Speaker 3: soup kitchens of Dublin to the Quantity boardroom. When you
Speaker 3: look back, now, what's your biggest regret and what are
Speaker 3: you most proud of?
Speaker 1: I think I think the biggest regret probably goes back
Speaker 1: to twenty twenty and not having that foresight to see
Speaker 1: that maybe COVID could be could come out with it
Speaker 1: better and we didn't have to make the tough decisions
Speaker 1: we did back there. But I'm most proud of making
Speaker 1: sure that Quotus came through COVID. You know, I could
Speaker 1: be here, I'm apologizing for a lot that went wrong.
Speaker 1: I could be apologizing here of like forty other airlines,
Speaker 1: like Virgin Bonds and Wrecks, for them going bankrupt, the
Speaker 1: Quantas going bankrupt. And it wasn't a certainty at the
Speaker 1: start of COVID that we were going to come true
Speaker 1: with but thankfully we did, and thanksfully Quantus is really
Speaker 1: strong today. I can rebuild its brand because I can
Speaker 1: rebuild its fleet, I can invest in its future, can
Speaker 1: invest in projects on rise because we did take the
Speaker 1: tough decisions during COVID.
Speaker 3: And finally, Allen, You're right that coming out to your
Speaker 3: father was both the worst and best moment of your life.
Speaker 3: How did that experience shape your decision to make Corners
Speaker 3: a prominent voice for marriage equality.
Speaker 2: Well, well, first it was I'd say in the book.
Speaker 1: I came out three times to my family, and I
Speaker 1: explained in detail to how that occurred.
Speaker 2: I had a neighbor that was kicked out as a teenager.
Speaker 1: I was really worried the same thing could happen to me,
Speaker 1: and I would have had a very different.
Speaker 2: Life if that had to happened.
Speaker 1: It's one of the reasons why I'm a big sponsor
Speaker 1: of the Pinnacle Foundation and a patriot of it, because
Speaker 1: still today young gay kids are kicked down a hot
Speaker 1: that gives the scholarships to let them have the education
Speaker 1: I was lucky to have thanks to my accepting pardons.
Speaker 1: I do think I was a big advocate on a
Speaker 1: lot of issues. I think it's the role of CEOs
Speaker 1: to be advocates. Airlines businesses are part of society. Your customers,
Speaker 1: your employees, and your shareholders want you to speak up
Speaker 1: on these things. In fact, you're in the Margin Equality campaign.
Speaker 1: I tell the story how one of our larger shareholders
Speaker 1: was telling me you're not doing enough and there is
Speaker 1: While it's the right moral thing to do on some
Speaker 1: of these cases, it's the right business thing to do
Speaker 1: because minority groups the LGBTI community are five times more
Speaker 1: likely to travel with.
Speaker 2: You if they think you represent them.
Speaker 1: You're likely to get more employees from diverse backgrounds if
Speaker 1: they think you represent them, and so on that basis,
Speaker 1: I was very proud of the work we did for Indigenous,
Speaker 1: for gender rights and for LGBT rights. We did a
Speaker 1: lot in a lot of different areas, and we did
Speaker 1: it for the right reasons.
Speaker 3: Oh Joyce, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2: Thanks Daniel, appreciate your time.
Speaker 3: Also in the news, the Prime ministers at odds with
Speaker 3: his own party, are we pushed to allow us trying
Speaker 3: to access the vultary assisted dying by telehealth? Alardy backed
Speaker 3: the move at last week's Labor conference, but Anthony Albinizi
Speaker 3: says while he's in favor of voluntary euthanasia, he's concerned
Speaker 3: that overturning the band could undermine the system. And Queensland
Speaker 3: Police are investigating after an innocent bystander was accidentally hit
Speaker 3: by a stray bullet while standing near her front door
Speaker 3: and cans on Saturday. The fifty year old woman was
Speaker 3: shot in the leg when officers opened fire on a
Speaker 3: man allegedly armed with knives. She's now in a stable condition.
Speaker 3: I'm Daniel James. Thanks for listening to seven AM. We'll
Speaker 3: be back tomorrow.