What goes up…..

The next blog has been bumped to the next blog, mainly because Sky News was kind enough to show the snivelling cry story (me now playing the world’s smallest violin), by the ACTU secretary Dave Oliver, yes, the text in the background ‘join for a better future‘ reads nice, but the story he is giving is intentional misdirection. Holden and Toyota did not leave overnight (which was discussed in my blog on February 12th called ‘The last Australian car‘), this was planned for a long time, as such, what he now calls ‘the opposition’ was at the centre of this entire mess.

When we hear statements like ‘everything is on the table‘ then that person is already deceiving us all. So let’s take a look at some of the things stated at http://www.skynews.com.au/businessnews/article.aspx?id=955273.

“Qantas has asked the government to change the Qantas Sale Act to allow more foreign investment arguing the strings attached hampered its ability to compete on a level playing field with its rivals“, which makes me wonder how this remains an Australian icon to begin with.

“Some aviation analysts argue the best option for Qantas would be to split the company into three separate companies: domestic, international and ancillary services such as the Frequent Flyer program and freight“, which reads a lot like the ‘bad bank’ solutions we have seen all over the global financial sector, which in the end leaves the taxpayers with an unfair bill.

The Australian gave us (at http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/aviation/pm-failing-australian-workers-on-qantas-actu/story-e6frg95x-1226844413018) the following statements.

the headline is already a first “PM failing Australian workers on Qantas: ACTU“, this is followed by “How did it get to the stage where our Prime Minister won’t even stick up for Australian jobs?” and “Australian unions will meet with Qantas CEO Alan Joyce this week to seek a commitment to minimise job losses, following the airline’s announcement last week it would slash 5000 jobs“.

So, let’s take a look at this all. From the first moment, with all due respect, This Dave Oliver comes across as a man born not too bright and he stopped evolving after birth. Why is this my personal view? You see, one should always keep an eye out for the reasoning. Without that, we have nothing but noise.

First the income side as it was reported by the Herald Sun last September 7th (at http://www.heraldsun.com.au/business/qantas-freezes-pay-of-chief-executive-alan-joyce-but-offers-him-1m-in-bonuses-and-shares/story-fni0dcne-1226713613053), where we see the following: “Mr Joyce’s base salary for the year to June remained unchanged at $2.109 million. But a cash bonus of $775,200 and $387,000 worth of deferred share payments bumped the total remuneration package up to $3.3 million for the year. Mr Joyce gave up his bonus the previous year when Qantas reported its first annual loss since privatisation. The airline, which last week reported a wafer-thin full-year net profit of $6 million, said a general freeze on executive management pay would apply over the coming year“.

So basically, an airline, this large, reports (according to the Herald Sun), a full year Net profit, twice the amount the CEO made in a year. So, the income of the CEO was 50% of the NET profit. This was in the era of labor and this is not inviting any clear statements of outrage or disgust? Let us not forget that the tier of high executives would have been less, but still substantial, which in my view becomes that the Net profit of Qantas was in 2013 a lot less than the income of the board of directors alone. which makes us wonder on how 7 high executives are save whilst 5000 jobs are forsaken to other areas. The positive news was 11 days before the Liberals came into office, and within three months, Qantas analysts ‘suddenly’ misplaced (or lost) a quarter of a billion dollars, how convenient. So Mr Dave Oliver, why do you not stop crying and take a long gander towards this obnoxious fact?

It is not the job of the government to provide for free slave labor (through financial incentives to big business for keeping jobs), mainly because this is Australia!

This all takes another tumble when we see the news (at http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/qantas-to-cut-1000-jobs-as-ceo-alan-joyce-takes-pay-cut/story-e6frfq80-1226775800430), where we see the following “Mr Joyce’s $3.3 million pay will be cut by at least 38 per cent this financial year because of the airline’s poor performance – which would leave him with a $2 million pay packet” this was on December 5th 2013, in less than three months they went from plus 6 million to: “Qantas said it expected to report an underlying before tax loss of $250-300 million for the first half of the 2013-14 financial year“, which gives us two points at this precise moment. The first is that in my view, the September report was feigned positivity as we were set up for the bad news blows. When you go from +6 million to minus three hundred million you better believe that we the readers and we the workers are getting played. So at this point Mr ACTU, would you like to please change your view from Australian Icon to Australian joke? When a company makes this fast a tumble, there is clear mis-management, mis-representation and mis-organisation, whilst the labor government was run by Miss-NotAllThatInformed (in those day referred to as ‘prime minister’). So whilst Dave Oliver is presenting under the veil of violins speaks out for all those poor poor workers, he should better realise and change his tune to make it sure that this was bungled by labor, for big business and 5000 workers are about to pay a hefty price for such levels of negligence.

So what about Tony Abbott?

Should a government give out a debt guarantee, whilst there is a decent amount of clear evidence that this money could be lost overnight? It is not for the Australian tax payers to lose this amount of money whilst the Qantas top will walk away with millions and with new foreign investors there is still a likely chance that many jobs will go overseas (why else would they invest in the first place). It is also the case that in that same news message (from December 5th) that former Qantas Group Chief Economist Tony Webber left the message that it was too late to help the ailing airline. Is he correct? I am not sure, but I feel certain that he would know a lot more of the Qantas finances then either the ACTU, the ATO or the other interested parties in forcing the hand of government to sign a debt guarantee. The fact that Tony Webber is now managing director of Webber Quantitative Consulting and Associate Professor at the University of Sydney Business School, gives more weight to the value of his statements then the feigned spoken outrage from some of the other players (even if he is not a UTS professor) ;-).

This situation as we ‘suddenly’ see the Qantas debacle was not grown overnight. This has been a failing business dimension for well over a year, because $300,000,000 is not lost overnight, it had to have been known for some time.