Qantas' epic legal backsplash
The airline's three days in Justice Lee's courtroom could scarcely have gone worse.
Qantas' chief people officer Catherine Walsh joined the airline in February 2024.[[The position of chief people officer was eradicated by Alan Joyce in 2017 upon the retirement of Jon Scriven, when human resources was shoved under Rob Marcolina, then the head of corporate strategy, and industrial relations fatefully folded under general counsel Andrew Finch. Both of those functions returned to Walsh's remit in February 2024.]] Its unlawful decision to sack 1,800 baggage handlers therefore pre-dated her by more than three years.
In the penalty proceedings of TWU v Qantas on Monday in the Federal Court, Walsh was offered up to Justice Michael Lee by Qantas as its messenger of deep contrition for that unlawful conduct, and as the face of profound cultural change at the airline since the departures of CEO Alan Joyce, a slew of his lieutenants and multiple board members including chairman Richard Goyder.
Joe Aston
For Qantas, demonstrating remorse and reform were both crucial to evading the maximum penalty of $121 million available to the court. On Tuesday, it was arguing for a "mid-range" penalty of between $40 million and $80 million – still an unprecedented impost in Australia for an infringement of workplace law.[[This was, after all, the largest ever instance of contravention of the general protection provisions of the Fair Work Act, the Workplace Relations Act 1996, the Industrial Relations Act 1988 or the Conciliation and Arbitration Act of 1904, making it "the largest infringement in approximately a century and a quarter of industrial activity," the TWU argued (and Qantas did not dispute).]] It has already cost Qantas $120 million in compensation to those former employees, approaching $20 million in legal fees and untold reputational damage.[[All of these expenses have been, and will continue to be, excluded from Qantas' "underlying" earnings.]]
Yet Justice Lee made it clear he believed Walsh was not the appropriate messenger.