Much as he no doubt wants it to, the Anthony Albanese Qantas upgrades scandal isn’t going away in a hurry. Not even a staged, Trump-lite rally, in front of the most captive audience imaginable, is going to cut through.
Especially not when he’s tripping up on his own weasel-words.
Anthony Albanese has left open the possibility his staff members may have asked Qantas on his behalf for free flight upgrades.
This is the ‘there it is!’ moment the opposition, not to mention Australian voters, have been waiting for. For the last week, the PM has resorted to a succession of carefully-worded answers that only deepened the impression that he was hiding something.
The Prime Minister had previously ruled out the allegation that he personally asked then-Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce – or anyone else in Qantas – for a free flight upgrade […]
Mr Albanese was asked whether any of his staff had asked Qantas for a free flight upgrade on his behalf.
“Not to my knowledge, no,” he told ABC AM.
‘Not to my knowledge.’ This smells an awful lot like ‘plausible deniability’.
You can bet the opposition isn’t going to let this one go.
Anthony Albanese’s top bureaucrats will be grilled in parliament over the Prime Minister’s relationship with Qantas and his involvement in blocking Qatar Airways’ application for more flights, as a cabinet minister admitted to personally requesting a flight upgrade with the national carrier […]
The Opposition Leader is also expected to ask Mr Albanese questions in the House of Representatives over his involvement with the government’s decision to block Qatar’s bid in 2023 for additional flight slots in Australia – a ruling that benefited the commercial interests of Qantas.
The Qatar issue is a way the Coalition can keep pressure on Mr Albanese over his relationship with former Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce without it being solely about free flights and upgrades, which is likely to become a problem for both major parties.
The more Albanese dithers and dodges on this one, the worse it’s going to get. Throwing a staged ‘totally-not-a-campaign’ rally isn’t going to fool anyone.
Mr Albanese landed in Adelaide seeking to upgrade himself from a distracted leader with a penchant for luxury travel to a can-do guy focused on cost-of-living concerns […]
While his speech was billed as Building Australia’s Future, a better slogan would have been Make Albo Great Again, with this carefully stage-managed rally aimed at making the battered Prime Minister look more prime ministerial.
Except that it was a hand-picked audience of fellow Labor MPs and unionists. Even so, Albo wimped out: no questions from journalists, no walk-arounds, no random engagements with unvetted punters. The only words not using an autocue were the drearily inevitable ‘Welcome to Country’ bullshit.
Like every big policy launch in the year since losing the Voice referendum, it’s destined to sink without making the barest ripple in the polls. The voters’ minds are more-or-less made up. All that remains to be seen is just how far Albanese will slide before the election.
A long way yet, if events are anything to go by. The past fortnight – buying a multimillion-dollar cliffside mansion, and getting caught soliciting luxury perks, have blown away the last, tattered remnants of his ‘I’m just a poor boy from a poor family’ bullshit.
The lethal net effect of the Qantas/Copacabana combo was to project the PM as a man fond of the trappings of office and planning for a new life when he’s out of it.
If Albanese has even the slightest hope of putting this scandal to bed, he should take a leaf out of John Howard’s book.
When Mark Latham went on the attack over excessively generous parliamentary pensions in 2004, Howard nobbled the damaging attack by acting swiftly and decisively. Over the outraged squealing of his peers, Howard immediately introduced dramatic reductions in MP’s pension entitlements. Howard in fact went even further than Latham had challenged him.
“I recognise that there is a community perception that the superannuation part is too generous,” Howard said.
“The most sensible thing is to recognise that, to get on with it and do something immediately, not just let it drift on for months and months,” he said as he neatly killed a distraction and growing resentment towards politicians.
Howard went on to win a fourth term with an increased vote.
