Qantas accused of taking advantage of ‘tragedy for the nation’

Qantas took advantage of a “tragedy for the nation” when it illegally outsourced the roles of 1800 workers, counsel for the Transport Workers’ Union has told the Federal Court.

“That’s what motivated them,” Noel Hutley SC, said. “It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, which as Qantas conceived of it, would return them to the order of $100 million per year. And that was not $100 million per year on a one-off basis.”

A Federal Court hearing to determine Qantas’ penalty for illegally terminating workers’ contracts during the COVID-19 pandemic continued on Tuesday. The TWU is asking the court to award the maximum penalty of $121 million.

The Federal Court previously found the company had illegally dismissed workers and prevented them from taking industrial action against the company. Qantas’ appeal to the Full Court was dismissed, and that determination was upheld by the High Court.

Late last year, Qantas agreed to compensate a total of $120 million to the 1820 affected ground staff whose contracts were terminated.

The first day of hearings on Monday involved the cross-examination of Qantas’ chief people officer, Catherine Walsh, who began the role in February 2024. She told the court that the airline’s agreement to pay compensation was evidence that the company was “very sorry”.

On Tuesday morning, Justice Michael Lee suggested that if Qantas was truly remorseful, it would have picked a witness who was “there at the relevant time”. Instead, Lee suggested that “a deliberate forensic decision” was made for chief executive officer Vanessa Hudson not to be cross-examined, despite Lee having given Qantas “every opportunity” to call Hudson or someone else who was there in 2020.

On Monday, Lee told the court that a “message must be sent to the broader corporate community that you can’t play the court for a fool and try to fashion your evidence in a careful way in order to try to dissemble what went on”.