Qantas reverts to type
Being this greedy is unsightly, and Vanessa Hudson's is on full display.
Qantas released its annual report on Friday morning, and all the focus was on the $250,000 chief executive Vanessa Hudson had sliced off her short-term bonus over the Qantas cyber attack in June, and the $3.8 million for Alan Joyce two years since he left the Mascot bunker.
But the annual report also confirmed that the airline's board of directors declined to penalise Hudson by a single dollar over her ruthless direction of litigation in 2024 against 1,800 former Qantas employees who were illegally sacked in 2020.
Justice Michael Lee of the Federal Court could not have been more scathing of Qantas' "new post-2023 leadership" in his penalty judgment delivered last month before the Qantas board finalised management's 2025 remuneration outcomes.
His Honour was particularly appalled by Qantas' decision in April 2024 – nine months into Hudson's reign – to pursue "an eleventh-hour forensic strategy directed to ensuring that the affected workers received nothing." This was Qantas' submission in court last Easter: that the former baggage handlers it had cast on the scrap heap should receive zero compensation. Justice Lee awarded them $120 million.