THE decision made yesterday by Fair Work Australia means certainty for Qantas customers and all our employees.

Certainty is one thing that has been absent in recent months as three unions have taken industrial action against Qantas.

By Friday, this action had cost Qantas close to $70 million at a rate of $15 million a week. A total of 70,000 passengers had been affected by cancelled and rescheduled flights.

With no prospect of a resolution any time soon - two union leaders spoke about industrial action possibly continuing for another year - I had to consider the potential impact on our business and our customers.

In a year's time, if industrial action had continued to escalate, Qantas' operations could have been reduced by half. Clearly this would have had major implications for jobs in all parts of the company, not to mention the ripple effect throughout the Australian economy.

That is why we chose to take the only form of protected industrial action open to us. We had to respond directly to the unions' industrial action in order to bring this crisis to an end.

The alternatives - giving in to each union's demands or allowing the dispute to continue indefinitely - would have been devastating for this great airline and those who rely on it.

I sincerely regret the short-term impact on customers who were affected by the grounding of our fleet. We have done everything possible to help our passengers, from accommodation to refunds. Our focus now is on getting people home and resuming a normal schedule as soon as possible.

However, there is absolutely no doubt that the situation today is far, far better than the situation on Friday.

ON Friday, families and businesses could not book Qantas flights with confidence. Today they can book Qantas flights with 100 per cent confidence.

No further industrial action can take place. There will be 21 days of negotiations between Qantas and each of the three unions. If this does not result in agreements, binding arbitration will take place under the control of Fair Work Australia.

We are entering a period of recovery and stability that will allow Qantas to resume normal operations and implement our strategy for the business (a strategy that was resoundingly endorsed by shareholders on Friday).

Before we move on, it's worth addressing a couple of myths.

It is incorrect to say that Qantas was not offering its employees pay rises in the negotiations with these three unions. We have always been willing to negotiate on this and offer reasonable pay increases.

The reason we have not been able to reach an agreement is because each of the three unions has made demands that would hand over control of some of the airline to the unions. They are demands that would make it impossible for us to keep up with the big foreign carriers. The licensed engineers' union want us to keep old ways of working that other airlines have left behind, while the pilots' union wants us to pay Jetstar pilots the same wages as Qantas pilots.

No responsible CEO could accept unions attempting to put a brake on change in this way.

It is also incorrect to say that Qantas is "offshoring" and sending jobs to Asia. What I announced in August was a response to over $200 million of annual losses in Qantas' international business. We are making a number of changes, including retiring some aircraft and withdrawing from some routes.

As a result, there will be around 1000 redundancies.

BUT these jobs are not going "offshore" - they simply will not exist any more. The redundancies are not related in any way to the new airline we will set up in Asia - an airline that will benefit Australia by strengthening links to the world's fastest-growing economy.

The suggestion that Qantas is abandoning Australia is absurd.

We spend more than $3 billion each year with Australia-based suppliers and Qantas passengers spend around $24 billion in the Australian tourism industry. Qantas employs over 30,000 people in Australia, in every state and territory, across more than 250 different roles. The vast majority of our employees will continue to be based in Australia. We do 90 per cent of our heavy maintenance in this country. No other airline does any heavy maintenance here.

None of this is a reason to ignore the potential of Asia or let foreign carriers walk all over us in our backyard. And nothing we are doing would breach the Qantas Sale Act in any way.

The final myth is that Qantas' commitment to safety is somehow at risk. We invest $1.5 billion in maintenance each year and $50 million in engineering training. We hold certification with air safety regulators all over the world. Safety is our first priority from the Qantas board level down, for both Qantas and its subsidiaries, no matter where they are based. This will never, ever change.

The past few months have been challenging for all of us but I genuinely believe we can recover quickly and begin laying the foundations for an exciting future.

I thank all our many employees for their support and hard work and our customers for their patience and loyalty.

Originally published as Absurd to say Qantas is abandoning Oz