Qantas boss Alan Joyce sent the airline’s share price into orbit today on forecasts of a $1.3bn profit this half year. What’s the scam?
The scam is RANS, DANS, TANS, RDAC, IAS, IFAM and JobKeeper – a dazzling array of at least six sorts of public subsidies – which helped get this private enterprise through the pandemic. As Qantas directors are now helping themselves to pay rises once again, all this government largesse has been forked out with nothing demanded in return; no customer service obligations, no obligations to employees – nothing in terms of reform.
What would be nice to see would be accounting reform which no longer allowed companies operating on the public teat to claim tax losses indefinitely to offset against their profits. Although Alan Joyce stunned the market for tipping a $1.3bn profit in the current trading period, that profit will certainly free of any income tax as Qantas has again built up a large suite of tax losses.
Oh, and maybe a rule which stopped publicly funded companies from buying back their own shares.
Cash was up from $7.5bn to $12.2bn in 2022 as travellers returned and ticket prices soared. It’s hard to work out the actual amount of public subsidies as the various schemes are booked in different places in the financial statements, effectively burying the total amount transferred from the public to team Joyce but it looks to be around the half a billion dollar mark last year.
Michael West established Michael West Media in 2016 to focus on journalism of high public interest, particularly the rising power of corporations over democracy. West was formerly a journalist and editor with Fairfax newspapers, a columnist for News Corp and even, once, a stockbroker.