In what can only be described as controlled fury, the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Anthony Albanese, has cast doubts on the maturity, sincerity and behaviour of Qantas Group CEO Alan Joyce following his announcement just before 5 pm that he was grounding its entire domestic and international operations until the pilot, licensed engineer and […]

In what can only be described as controlled fury, the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Anthony Albanese, has cast doubts on the maturity, sincerity and behaviour of Qantas Group CEO Alan Joyce following his announcement just before 5 pm that he was grounding its entire domestic and international operations until the pilot, licensed engineer and ground staff unions withdraw their legitimate court sanctioned industrial campaigns and pay and condition claims.

Albanese said the government has not learned of the Qantas grounding until after 2 pm this afternoon, less than three hours before the action was announced just before 5 pm eastern time.

“This action is quite extraordinary” the Minister said.

“At no stage in any of the discussions the government has had with Qantas did it indicate that it wanted the government to intervene at Fair Work Australia to resolve the issues, and it did not at any stage mention that it was contemplating these groundings,” he said.

“I have real concerns about these actions, and I have spoken to Mr Joyce since the announcement to make my concerns known, and he has told me that the decision was taken at a board meeting this morning and that it was a fait accompli.

“I find it extraordinary that a board meeting should have suddenly decided on this course of action this morning less than a day after it held an annual general meeting.

“There has to be planning involved in this. I leave it to those who know how aviation operates to ponder the timing of this.”

Minister Albanese said the disputes between Qantas and its pilots, licensed engineers and ground staff were capable of being resolved by mature adults who recognised a shared interest in arriving at solutions that were in the longer term interests of the company and its employees.

“I made it very clear to Mr Joyce that I was very disturbed that we had conducted a number of discussions with Qantas during which no reference had been made to the possibility of such action being taken by the airline,” he said.

Albanese also made it clear that he had been in close consultation with the CEO of Virgin Australia, John Borghetti, following his conversation with Alan Joyce and that Virgin Australia had undertook to make every effort to step into the breach caused by the Qantas groundings with additional capacity.

While the Minister was expressing his lack of confidence in the Qantas board and Alan Joyce, the Vice President of the Qantas pilot union, Richard Woodward, said he knew that Qantas had booked thousands of hotel rooms world wide some weeks ago in advance of its action to ground all of it international and domestic flights and had been negotiating replacement flights with Cathay Pacific up to several months ago.

Woodward said the Qantas action was in his opinion premeditated and well planned, and queried Joyce’s stability, describing his performance this afternoon as ‘bordering on the maniacal.”

Passengers are reporting that they had been on boarded flights ready to depart with no inkling of the grounding decision, saying that the pilots and flight attendants were also completely unaware of the action until they were told to empty the jets.

On returning to the terminals they were handed letters from Qantas management setting out the situation and the arrangements that would allow them to claim hotel expenses, change bookings to other airline or receive refunds.

Fair Work Australia is holding an urgent hearing into the dispute in Melbourne late this evening on the application of the federal government which has asked the tribunal to seek an immediate suspension of all industrial action by all parties.

The Qantas action severely embarrassed the Australian Government at the Commonwealth Heads of Governments Meeting or CHOGM in Perth, potentially causing delays to many delegates and their entourages and the extension at short notice of the special security arrangements.

Earlier tonight Dick Smith told ABC News that he would have shut down Qantas three years ago. Not a word from such an astute and patriotic businessman about solving the Qantas competitive issues by actually matching the route structure to demand, or attacking the biggest cost impost, fuel, with timely investments in fuel efficient jets, or having competitive product at the premium level where most passengers don’t actually pay for their fare, the company does.

With good management, and a slightly lower exchange rate, Qantas would be highly competitive. This defeatist and inept management has ruined our national carrier, and has been inexcusably incompetent.

Later this evening Tony Sheldon, the national secretary of the TWU added to allegations made earlier by pilot union vice president Richard Woodward that today’s groundings had been planned long in advance.

These are allegations that Qantas needs to address, or risk serious damage to its insistence that it has been negotiating in good faith for many months with the parties.

Just before the late night hearing of the FWA application the Prime Minister Julia Gillard avoided numerous opportunities to add to Minister Alabanese’s commentary on how Qantas notified the government of its actions which she said had drastically escalated the industrial situation and brought it to a stage where it could have an impact on the national economy.

The Prime Minister, speaking at the CHOGM conference in Perth, said 17 heads of state and their parties had been booked to leave on Qantas flights from tomorrow, and were making their own arrangements to book on other airlines with Australian support if required.

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