Canberra's Qantas syndrome
Bureaucrats and MPs are desperately addicted to loyalty status credits.
The Albanese government's half-arsed Aviation White Paper, released last August, committed the Department of Finance to producing a review of the government's own travel policies by the end of 2024.
That review was completed by Finance on Christmas Eve, but only released seven months later, at 4pm on Friday afternoon.
The government was never going to risk releasing this report in the months leading up to the federal election, held on May 3, after the extreme political heartburn it survived in November 2024.
Upon the release of my book, The Chairman's Lounge, a scandal erupted over Anthony Albanese's catalogue of historical freebies worth tens of thousands of dollars from Qantas and its partner Emirates while he was transport minister. The Prime Minister was also forced to belatedly concede that he had obtained membership of Qantas' exclusive Chairman's Lounge for his son, Nathan – at the time, a university student.
The uproar ultimately fizzled after shadow transport minister Bridget McKenzie was sprung accepting a stack of her own flight upgrades but (unlike Albanese) not even declaring them.