It’s not typically that yet one more Qantas scandal round its unlawful behaviour will get trumped by a show of hubris and poor service by another main firm. Having walked round with targets on their backs for a lot of the yr, Qantas’ executives and its three-wise-monkeys board of administrators should be delighted that Optus has absorbed media consideration for final week’s outage and its ensuing communications failure — full with comparisons within the Monetary Evaluation of CEO Kelly Bayer Rosmarin’s response with these of the airline to its many scandals.
Bayer Rosmarin is now reportedly contemplating stepping down — which might immediately elevate her above the parade of clowns at Qantas, who’ve grimly clung onto their chairman’s lounge entry, proper as much as Alan Joyce, the unflushable turd of Australian enterprise, who was solely pushed out, mere weeks from his retirement date, when the ACCC got here brandishing multi-hundred-million greenback fines earlier this yr.
Optus’ outage seems much less associated to Qantas-style behaviour — a blatant contempt for patrons, a dedication to decreasing ranges of service, underinvestment as a key company technique, and illegal remedy of its staff — than human error and the grim indisputable fact that infrastructure, regardless of how gold-plated, sometimes breaks down. Telecommunications, together with aviation, is of course a core space within the relentlessly increasing space of “crucial infrastructure” regulation by authorities — that after lined 4 sectors, however now extends to a mighty 11 — the first impact of which has been to easily elevate regulatory boundaries to entry in sectors already liable to monopolies and oligopolies. Definitely, greater than twenty years of crucial infrastructure conferences between business and bureaucrats (I endured some in my former life), and steadily creeping regulation didn’t do a lot to guard Optus clients final week.
Bayer Rosmarin’s sins — certain to be forensically examined on the inevitable Senate inquiry right this moment — are as an alternative round communication, at which Optus undoubtedly failed, however for which one other downside gave the impression to be that the corporate wouldn’t inform folks what they wished to listen to, i.e. that their companies have been about to be restored, primarily as a result of it had little thought itself. What they did replicate is a persistent theme about how out-of-touch senior Australian enterprise figures will be from what their clients count on. That Bayer Rosmarin and her executives did not be taught from the savage criticism of Optus’ communication about its hacking a yr in the past says a lot about their poor grasp of shopper sentiment. A lot for the neoliberal concept that markets are the last word democracy and by some means channel the wants and needs of the general public higher than a poll field can.
However Qantas’ conduct was — as soon as once more — far worse. It stood down worker Theo Seremetidis who raised security issues — “specifically the danger of staff contracting COVID-19 whereas cleansing and servicing planes arriving from China”, in early 2020, within the phrases of the presiding choose. Qantas graciously “acknowledged the findings of the NSW District Courtroom” in response — relatively than, presumably, asserting it was seceding from NSW and the nation-state of Mascot would henceforth be its dwelling.
Qantas’ remedy of Seremetidis seems so much like punishment of a whistleblower, in addition to an try and ignore justified security issues. Its conduct is of a chunk with its unlawful sacking of 1,700 workers throughout the pandemic, and its alleged industrial-scale breaches of shopper regulation in relation to ghost flights.
If the ACCC is profitable in its prosecution over the ghost flights — overcoming the airline’s asinine “we don’t promote tickets” defence — then the decision will probably be in on the Alan Joyce-era Qantas: it was a relentless lawbreaker that engaged in illegal conduct in relation to its staff, its clients and security.
What is going to Qantas’ response to the Seremetidis determination be? Its ordinary technique of relentless litigation, if vital all the best way to the Excessive Courtroom? If that’s the case, the declare of CEO Vanessa Hudson that by some means Qantas has entered a brand new and higher period will probably be confirmed hole certainly.
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