Alan Joyce says it was not just ‘morally right’ but also in Qantas’s business interests to fight for marriage equality

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The chief executives of Australia’s major airlines have warned they will not be silent on social issues, with Qantas’s Alan Joyce arguing it was not just “morally right” but also in its business interests to fight for marriage equality.

At the National Press Club on Wednesday Joyce and Virgin Australia’s Paul Scurrah both pushed back against calls from Scott Morrison and his assistant minister, Ben Morton, for corporates to resist social campaigning on issues including the environment.

The pair appeared side by side as part of a joint industry call for the government to impose arbitration processes on airport monopolies, which they argued were earning super-profits and driving up airfares through “grossly inflated” charges.

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Joyce also defended his remuneration of almost $24m in 2018 – the highest of any chief executive in Australia – by noting it was determined by shareholders, was the result of Qantas’s massive corporate turnaround and has “come down quite significantly since then”.

When asked about advocacy, Joyce replied that “good companies” would intervene on both social and economic issues. He pointed to Qantas’s record calling for company tax cuts and warning against Labor’s industrial relations policies to show it was “active” in the economic debate.

“We’re not going to pull back on what we say on social issues, because that’s important to our employees, our customers and our shareholders,” he told reporters.

Qantas supported marriage equality not just because it was “the morally right thing to do” but because there was a “great business case for it”, he said, citing the fact employees wanted the company to stand up on the issue and Generation Y wanted to work for a company “with a social conscience”.

“To get talent, you need to be out there on social issues. We know that environmental issues are a big issue worldwide. There are people that are not travelling in Europe because of [global warming so] we need to address it.”

Scurrah said Virgin had been “very strong” in advocating for environmental and mental health causes and was “very focused” on hitting targets for reducing carbon emissions.

“You will hear us use our brand to push whatever cause we think needs to be pushed at that time,” he said. “We will speak up when we need to.”

Asked about the Coalition’s proposed religious discrimination bill, Joyce said he hoped that consultation would help achieve “an outcome that … continues to allow us to have an inclusive workplace”.

The bill includes the controversial “Israel Folau” clause prohibiting employers setting codes of conduct regulating expression of religious belief unless it is reasonable to do so – with the additional requirement for large businesses to prove it would cause them “financial hardship” if they did not set the rule.

Qantas is a sponsor of the Wallabies, the national team that dropped Folau when Rugby Australia terminated his contract for breaching its policies through social media posts declaring hell awaits homosexuals.

Joyce noted views in the legal community that financial hardship was a “very hard benchmark” for a company to prove and “probably the highest bar that somebody in the drafting office could come up with”.

Asked about his pay, Joyce noted his 2018 pay packet was the result of Qantas’s share price increasing from $1 to $6 and market capitalisation increasing from $2bn to $10bn.

“And our shareholders did exceptionally well out of it, and every remuneration report that Qantas … has had 98% or 99% support,” he said. “Because the shareholders want the CEO and the management to be incentivised to actually turn the company around.”

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In the main speech, Joyce said that Australian airports were an “unregulated revenue stream in a monopoly environment”, leading to “super-profits” that were two-and-a-half times the size of the big four banks’ profits.

Joyce cited an $18,000 fee for a flight diverted from Sydney to Canberra as an example of unfair prices, likening the fee to something “you’d expect … to happen with Somali pirates, not with an airport”.

Joyce said if airport pricing improved the airlines would not simply “pocket the difference” because they face “real competition” which had lowered air fares by 40% in the last 10 years.

Scurrah said that the proposal for arbitration when airports and airlines are at an impasse was a “light touch” that would even up the bargaining power.