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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

The prime minister’s relationship with former Qantas CEO Alan Joyce and whether he likes a free upgrade has been the talk of Canberra, prompted by the publication of a new book called The Chairman’s Lounge.

Speculation about what the book would reveal had been swirling for months and it was widely known in political circles that some of it would be bad for the prime minister.

But when the book was finally published, Albanese and his office seemed unprepared.

Today, special correspondent for The Saturday Paper Jason Koutsoukis on the upgrades saga that’s entangled politicians from both major parties and whether it matters if politicians get a fancy drink in a fancy chair.

It’s Monday November 4.

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RUBY:

So, Jason, tell me where the story of the Qantas upgrades begins.

JASON:

So it kicked off last week because of a book, but there's actually been a lot of tension between the author of this book, a former Australian Financial Review columnist named Joe Aston and the prime minister for quite a while.

Last year, Joe Aston wrote a story in the Financial Review reporting that Anthony Albanese’s son Nathan, had been granted membership to Qantas’ exclusive Chairman's Lounge. That story coming so soon after Transport Minister Catherine King had blocked an application from Qatar Airways to add more international flights to Australian routes dogged Anthony Albanese for weeks.

He refused to confirm or deny whether his son had a membership. He also rang the editor of The Australian Financial Review, Michael Stutchbury, to ask him not to run the story. He was also facing questions day after day about whether his son's membership of the Chairman's Lounge had somehow led him to act in Qantas's interests over Qatar Airways.

And this story infuriated some members of Anthony Albanese's frontbench at the time. They just couldn't understand why the prime minister didn't come out straight away and say yes, Nathan is a member of the Chairman's Lounge, but he shouldn't be and I've asked him to hand back his membership to Qantas.

RUBY:

Okay, so Joe Aston's reporting on this, it turned into a book, The Chairman's Lounge. Tell me about what's in that book when it comes to Anthony Albanese's travels.

JASON:

So this is a book that's really about Qantas and Alan Joyce and how Joe Aston believes that Alan Joyce mismanaged the company in the second half of his tenure, as chief executive. But the most explosive allegations in the book concerned the Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Joe Aston's allegation is that during the time between 2009 and 2022, Albanese received two free upgrades for himself and one upgrade for his family.

You know, this book has been the talk of Canberra for months and by the time it was published last week it was widely known in the press gallery and I'm sure in the ministerial wing that there were several sections of the book that would cause problems for Anthony Albanese.

But instead of being ready for questions, it seemed to me that they were quite flat footed. He was asked about his relationship with Joyce and Qantas and he just tried to bat those questions away by saying that every single thing had been declared.

Audio excerpt — Prime Minister Anthony Albanese:

“I have at all times, at all times acted in a transparent and appropriate way.”

JASON:

He was also asked about whether his son was a member of the Chairman's Lounge and the prime minister did concede that, yes, Nathan was a member of the Chairman's Lounge but he tried to explain that by saying that when he separated from his then wife, Carmel Tebbutt, in January 2019, he simply transferred the plus one entitlement to his son. The prime minister said, I think you know, that people's families shouldn't be the subject of targeting. That this all happened a while ago. It was a very simple explanation.

But the problem was that this was the first time that Albanese had really confirmed his son's membership of the Chairman's Lounge and it ended up making things a lot worse for him.

RUBY:

Right. How so, Jason?

JASON:

Well, in the newspapers on Monday, journalists kind of seized on two new details. Firstly, Albanese, he confirmed that his son was a member of the Chairman's Lounge, but he had not declared his son's membership on his parliamentary declaration of interests, as members of Parliament typically do for their spouse or partner when it comes to the chairman's lounge.

And the other detail that journalists seized on was that the prime minister's fiancee, Jodie Haydon, had also received a complimentary Chairman's Lounge membership in October 2022. And that's something that is declared on the prime minister's register of interests. So according to the prime minister last Sunday, Nathan was his plus one, but Jodie Haydon was also a plus one. So you know the circumstances around his son's membership are not entirely clear.

RUBY:

Right. And so how did he go on to respond to to those details?

JASON:

Well, he gave another press conference on Tuesday, and I think he made things even worse for himself when he decided that he would try to play the man and not the ball and lashed out at Joe Aston personally.

Audio excerpt — Prime Minister Anthony Albanese:

“Now I've declared everything. I just made this point and I just make the point as well that the person who is trying to sell a book. And fair enough, I don't see declarations that he's a former Liberal Party staffer for a number of senior members of the Liberal Party, including Joe Hockey and Bruce Baird. I don't see declarations that he's a former Qantas employee...”

JASON:

Now the problem with that, though, is that Joe Aston did make those declarations and he kind of couldn't have been more explicit about it because those declarations are contained in the first line of the book's first page.

RUBY:

Right, so the strategy of attacking the messenger – it rarely works, but it seems to have significantly backfired. So why did the prime mInister choose to respond in this way?

JASON:

Well, from my conversations with people in the Prime Minister's Office, they recognise that, you know, Albanese himself knows that he fucked up with that answer. Yeah, that's what someone told me. He knows he fucked up.

But another key Albanese ally, the Minister for Defence Industry, Pat Conroy. He landed the attack on Joe Aston a little better when he appeared at the National Press Club on Wednesday. He said it was actually very important to point out Aston's affiliation with the Liberal Party. And he said these, you know, the claims in this book are made by a former Liberal staffer who as recently as three months ago was the headline act at a federal Liberal fundraiser.

A bit of a feeding frenzy had already sort of developed in Canberra around this issue. And later on Wednesday the prime minister's spokeswoman was forced to issue a statement to the media saying that the prime minister had not ever called Alan Joyce seeking an upgrade.

But even that didn't kill the issue because that statement seemed to kind of leave open the possibility that perhaps the prime minister had tried to contact the CEO of Qantas via another means. And Sydney radio presenter Ben Fordham reached out to the prime minister personally and he read out a text message exchange that he had had with the PM on air on 2GB on Thursday.

Audio excerpt — Texts between Ben Fordham and Albanese:

“The question was asked, did you ever text Alan Joyce about flight upgrades? The PM's answer, no.

“Did you ever email Alan Joyce about flight upgrades? The PM’s answer again, no.

“Did you ever share with Alan Joyce any flights or travel plans without specifically asking for an upgrade? The PM replied, no.”

JASON:

The PM said, you know, “over 30 years that could have been a mistake, but we've gone through the records and there are none. Why would you call the CEO of Qantas to discuss your flights anyway? I haven't spoken to Alan in a very long time”.

RUBY:

So who to believe – the author of the chairman’s lounge, or the prime minister? That’s after the break.

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RUBY:

Jason, Joe Aston says Albanese asked the Qantas CEO Alan Joyce to upgrade flights for him. However, Anthony Albanese firmly denies ever having done this. So who should we believe here?

JASON:

Well, it's a really tricky situation. Joe Aston says he's very confident of his sourcing. But we know he didn't speak to Alan Joyce and we know he didn't speak to the prime minister. So how did he get this information? We really do have to trust the prime minister when he says that he has been through 30 years of flight records. He's got to be confident because Alan Joyce is likely to be called back before a Senate committee to answer questions around this issue. So perhaps we better wait and see what Alan Joyce has to say before we really issue any sort of further judgement on who to believe here.

RUBY:

The focus has been on the prime minister on this issue, but of course he isn't the only politician who's, you know, accused of accepting various perks while in office. I mean, you could almost say it's endemic to the political class.

JASON:

Joe Aston actually points out in his book that Albanese isn't alone here.

Audio excerpt — Journalist:

“Did you ever ring Alan Joyce or anyone in Qantas?”

Audio excerpt — Transport Minister Bridget McKenzie:

“I do not have a hotline to request upgrades.”

JASON:

Opposition transport spokeswoman Bridget McKenzie, was forced to admit this week that she had may have received flight upgrades and not properly declared them on her register of interests.

Audio excerpt — Transport Minister Bridget McKenzie:

“I think, you know, I was wrong earlier this week to be so emphatic. I did end up having an upgrade that I had declared, but it really highlighted to me the…”

JASON:

The Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, who spent most of last week calling for Albanese to refer himself to the NACC, the National Anti-Corruption Commission. He also admitted that he wasn't immune to a freebie either.

In 2022, Dutton borrowed mining billionaire Gina Rinehart's private plane to fly from Queensland to Sydney and the optics of that aren't good either. In fact, a photo has been circulating of Gina Rinehart and Peter Dutton on the steps of a Qantas plane waving to the cameras. In Peter Dutton's defence, he accused the Government of playing games and by not making a taxpayer funded VIP jet available.

Audio excerpt — Opposition Leader Peter Dutton:

“The cheaper option for the taxpayer was for my office to speak to Mrs. Rinehart's office as to whether the plane might be available. That was at zero cost to the taxpayer.”

JASON:

But Peter Dutton hasn't hesitated to charge taxpayers in recent years. Between February and August last year, he spent $224,000 worth of taxpayers money for the use of VIP planes. And Government Services Minister Bill Shorten chipped in on this this week and according to Bill Shorten, the Opposition's tried to make him ill of this. They've held themselves up to be saintly, but actually they're not.

RUBY:

Right but I suppose what's important here is what this might tell us about the character of the politicians involved. So do you think that this has altered people’s perception of the PM?

JASON:

Well, I think this does go to the PM's style as a leader. A former Labour staffer that I spoke to this week who's known the prime minister since 1996, he said to me, this is classic Albanese. You know, he thinks he knows best, but he's actually terrible on the details. If you were to ask him, you know, who ratted on who in the Marrickville South ALP sub branch elections in the early 1990s, then you know no problem. Albanese can recall every vote. But when he’s under pressure and out in front of the cameras, far too often, you know, this person said to me, you see him trip himself up. We did see that, of course, during the 2022 election campaign when, you know, the prime minister got into hot water over not being able to recall key economic figures, etcetera.

Another Labour insider said that, you know, Albanese's love for a freebie is becoming a bit of an open secret, whether it's VIP flights, tickets to sporting events or concerts, you know, rubbing shoulders with corporate high flyers at these events. The PM is starting to look out of touch. And don't forget, you know, this is coming off the back of news that the prime minister bought a $4.3 million house on the New South Wales central coast just a couple of weeks ago, which many people also thought was a bad look. And that showed how out of touch the PM is when it comes to the everyday struggles of ordinary Australians.

RUBY:

Jason, thank you for your time.

JASON:

Absolute pleasure to talk with you, Ruby.

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RUBY:

Also in the news today –
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced that a re-elected Labor government would slash student debt by 20 per cent.

According to the government, this would cut around $16 billion in debt and would apply to a range of income contingent loans, including HELP debts and apprenticeship loans.

The plan would see an average HELP debt of $27,600 reduced by around $5,520, with the whole package costing the budget more than $500 million.

The changes would take effect in June next year.

AND

Education Minister Jason Clare has admitted he asked for and received a free flight upgrade from Qantas in 2019.

Mr Clare said he had recently had surgery and recalls calling and “probably” speaking with a government relations official, who arranged an upgrade for his private overseas trip.

The minister declared the flight at the time.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. See you tomorrow.

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