Former Qantas CEO Alan Joyce has resurfaced after nearly three years in the wilderness to cobble together some sort of redemption tour.
But early interviews have so far rendered a man unchanged. He’s sorry, but we’re not really sure what for. He did everything he did for the benefit of the company. He did not do anything to subvert the natural order of the airline’s exclusive Chairman’s Lounge membership, particularly when it came to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his son. And so on.
“I’m actually very, very proud of the fact that I’m not sitting here and apologising for Qantas going bankrupt, [something] that many airlines around the world did,” Joyce told our colleague ahead of book day.
“I think we would have caused more problems, more angst, if I was sitting here and apologising for Qantas going bankrupt.”
When we checked in with Joyce’s publisher in March, his publicist said there were no plans for a book launch, a decision seemingly justified by what he has told journalists in recent days. Lucky for us, though, Joyce has committed to at least three public events to coincide with the release of his new book.
Best we can tell, the redemption tour will kick off on Wednesday, when the bespectacled former Qantas boss, who oversaw the illegal sacking of about 1800 workers, is scheduled to show his face at Sydney’s Gleebooks in conversation with the ABC’s Fran Kelly.
A day later, Joyce, one of the most unpopular figures in corporate Australia, will descend on the Australian National University, one of the nation’s most unpopular institutions, for an appearance in conversation with The Australian Financial Review’s political correspondent, Ron Mizen.
The following week, Joyce will hoof it down to Melbourne, where he will sit with the ABC’s Raf Epstein for a “rare and candid conversation” at the Wheeler Centre. We look forward to the debrief.
Card declined
Senator Deborah O’Neill has shot to prominence for her role in leading the Senate’s probe into KPMG’s whistleblower scandal in recent months.
But O’Neill, perhaps best known now for fighting big corporates, doesn’t appear to be interested in all corporate wrongdoing.
The Labor senator, whose office didn’t respond to a request for comment by deadline, was among a bloc of her party colleagues who voted against a motion tabled by Greens senator David Shoebridge earlier this month aimed at forcing the privacy commissioner to release documents related to its investigation into American Express.
That’s because commissioner Carly Kind only released a 14-page summary of her determination, which was posted online. She ordered Amex to toughen up its security processes to guard against the types of “insider threats” that led one of its employees to spy on a customer. She also ordered the firm to issue a written apology.
But the apology, seen by CBD, reads like it was written by the aforementioned Joyce. “I refer to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner’s determination that American Express Australia interfered with your privacy within the meaning of s 13(1) of the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth),” reads the apology, penned by the company’s chief compliance and privacy officer, Graeme Alexander. “We apologise for the impact this has had on you.”
Hardly worth the paper it was printed on, particularly when you consider the Amex executive’s previous correspondence with the complainant, which suggested the company’s employee had done nothing wrong.
“The other party originally linked to that booking contacted our Platinum Travel team as a Card Member, not as an employee,” Alexander wrote back in May 2022. “In their capacity as a customer, they requested that their travel request be separated from the original joint booking, which they are permitted to do.”
In a heavily redacted submission made to the commission in April 2023, Amex admitted the employee himself had viewed and made changes to the travel booking, among other instances of “unauthorised access”.
American Express didn’t respond to a request for comment by deadline.
The documents ordered by the Senate are due for release on Tuesday. But we won’t be holding our breath.
Giles surfaces in KPMG saga
On Monday, the Senate committee responsible for flaying KPMG released a fresh bundle of documents related to a separate whistleblower scandal dating back five years ago.
The document that caught our eye confirmed KPMG had finally paid the legal costs of its former partner Brendan Lyon, who blew the whistle on a now discredited multibillion-dollar NSW rail entity back in 2021, and who later fronted the NSW ICAC.
But the costs were only paid out to Lyons after Greens senator Barbara Pocock asked the firm’s independent director Jane Hemstritch about it at a hearing last month. Hemstritch, according to the June 19 transcript, said she “was unaware of anything to do with his compensation”. Lyon was eventually paid on July 15.
His lawyer? None other than Rebekah Giles. How amusing to think the senator may have effectively acted as debt collector on behalf of one of the most prominent lawyers in the country.
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