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Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Wednesday, the thirtieth of October.
I'm Zara, I'm Sam.
Prime Minister Anthony Alberesi has been accused of directly asking the former CEO of Quantus, Alan Joyce, for free undisclosed flight upgrades. The allegation has been detailed in a new book by journalist Joe Aston Now. Following the publishing of an excerpt of that book over the weekend, the Opposition has said it will consider establishing a senate inquiry into the matter. The PM, on the other hand, has suggested the claims come from a person who is just trying
to sell a book. In today's deep Dive, we'll explain everything you need to know about Anthony Alberesi and Quantas First Sam.
What's making headlines.
The Victorian government has introduce new laws to improve legal processes for victims of violent and sexual crimes. Under legislation tabled in State Parliament on Tuesday, victims and witnesses of family violence, sexual offenses and stalking cases would only be required to give evidence during court proceedings and not during pre trial hearings. The measure is aimed at avoiding processes that could retraumatize victims by making them repeat their testimonies
several times. The government has also proposed making videolink court appearances the default for alleged offenders. It says this would help victims to avoid having to unnecessarily come face to face with a perpetrator. Victorian State Attorney General Jacqueline Simes says survivors quote deserve justice, not further trauma as they move through the legal system.
Mayer has announced plans to take over several popular Aussie brands, including just Genes, JJ's, Dotty and Portman's. It comes after the department store Giant announced a nine hundred and fifty million dollar acquisition of apparel brand, a clothing arm of Premier Investments. Premier said it will retain ownership over Smiggle and Peter Alexander to focus on growing the stationery and
sleepwear brands. Premier and Maya shareholders will need to approve the deal before the department store can merge with apparel brands. If it goes ahead, the retail group would own more than seven hundred and eighty stores. Across Australia and New Zealand and employ more than seventeen thousand people.
Israel's parliament has voted to ban the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, otherwise known as UNRA. It means the key aid body delivering aid in Kaza will not be allowed to operate in Israel, which could impact the flow of aid into the region. Earlier this year, Israel claimed UNRASTAFF had been involved in Hamas's attack on October seven. A UN investigation found nine staff members who
have since been sacked, were involved in the attacks. Australian Foreign Minister Pennywong has urged Israel to reconsider the ban.
And finally, today's good news, a record number of women have been elected to Japan's lower House of Parliament. Seventy three female candidates were successful after Sunday's election, which means women will now make up about sixteen percent of Japan's House of Representatives. That's compared to a global average of twenty seven percent. The main opposition party in Japan, the CDPJ saw the most women elected of all the parties, with thirty female candidates securing a seat.
We'll be back with the Deep Dive after this short break.
Sam, I'd say it's fairly rare for a book to make such a splash before it's even been released. So this book was only released yesterday. Joe Asen's new book.
Hang On, No Silly Questions The Daily Ores September twenty twenty three.
See wall to wall coverage of that book too.
Senat quies the whole lot not. This book's probably a little more controversial.
It is, so just to give you a bit of context, this book released by Joe Aston yesterday is called The Chairman's Lounge, and over the weekend we saw the Nine Papers release an excerpt of that book. And in that excerpt it was published in the Good Weekend, there were a whole lot of I guess, allegations you'd say, that were leveled at the Prime Minister and at the CEO or the former CEO of Quantus, Alan Joyce. And since that excerpt was published, the story has completely taken on a life of its own.
It's really important to understand who Joe Aston is because I think that has a bit to do with the why it's being reported so widely as well. Give me a sense of who this author.
Is so Joe Aston is not just an author. He is a journalist. He worked for the Australian Financial Review for over a decade. He resigned last year after, as I said, a fairly long stint, during which time he wrote a column called Rear Window, and a lot of that column was dedicated to, I guess, uncovering and exposing diff different areas of Australian political and media life.
One of the worst things for somebody to wake up to was knowing you were going to be in rear Window that day exactly.
And someone that knew that reality all too well was Alan Joyce. Because towards the end of his tenure, Joe Aston spent a lot of his journalistic time covering Quantus, and if you think back, it was during the time where it was COVID, there were layoffs, there was all of the stuff around mass cancelations and flight credits, and Joe Aston really, i'd say, led the way in the coverage on those sorts of issues.
Tensions between Joe.
Aston and Quantus continued to grow and grow and grow, and then they boiled over to the point where Quantus actually stripped the AFI from its lounges and in flight Wi Fi services back in twenty twenty three.
I remember they literally took out the hard copies of the paper.
Yeah, exactly, And so I think it's fair to say, to summarize why Joe Aston gets the response that he does is that he's quite a controversial journalist, a very distinct style and way of writing. And to zero in on it, Joe asked, is one of the most read journalists in this country. And so when we realized he was publishing a book, I think everyone expected that there would be a lot there.
And then when the excerpt of the book ran in the nine newspapers over the weekends, this curiosity as to what was going to be in the book was even more accentuated just on that piece alone in the paper. What did we learn?
So in that excerpt it was revealed that Anthony Albanesi, of course the Prime Minister, received more than twenty flight upgrades between two thousand and nine and twenty nineteen. Family members accompanied him on some of these trips, and many of them were personal. The book, citing anonymous Quantus Insiders, claims Albanizi asked Joyce directly to upgrade his flights, while
Anthony Albanezi was in the transport portfolio. So the suggestion there is that Albanzi, as a politician, had a direct line to the head of Australia's biggest airline, which made up obviously a big part of his portfolio at that time, and that he was using that direction line allegedly to ask for personal upgrades. It's important to note that Albanzi had previously declared his own personal flights and his membership to the quantas Chairman's Lounge, which is the name of
the book, which is a VIP area. You get food, you get special treatment, it's a place where all MP's and senators are offered access. So that's not really in contention here. What's more in contention is how these upgrades came about and whether or not they were disclosed. Aston also claims that Alberanzi didn't declare efforts to get his
son Nathan a membership to the Chairman's Lounge. That was first reported by the AFI a little while ago, so that's not new information, but that was also included in this excerpt. I think if we're to zoom out and try to understand why this is such a hot political topic, what's being claimed here by Aston is that Anthony ALBERIZI was a political asset four Quantas. So I'm just going
to directly quote asked in here. He says it was a slice of fortune that fueled Quantus as Hubrius, the new Prime Minister, was an asset that the airline had been developing for fifteen years, a transport minister who had been upgraded to.
The top job.
Okay, so what Joe Aston is trying to highlight, I guess is not necessarily just the fact that Anthony Alberzi allegedly got these upgrades from economy to business class or you know, some free pajamas, but that it signified a close relationship between the head of Australi's biggest airline and the future Prime minister, which could have gone both ways. That favorable decisions could have been made for Quantus by Aberenezi and upgrades could have been granted by Quantas the other way exactly.
And I think that's what goes to the heart of why this has become.
Such a political issue.
And I think that it's not, as you said, a matter of free pajamas, but it's what it could signify if these allegations are true, sure, and that's certainly what the Opposition is talking about this week. So the Coalition has been really quick to jump on this one. We've had Opposition leader Peter Dunn and call it a bit strange that Albinizi allegedly asked for these upgrades. He said, it's a strange arrangement when you can pick up the phone to the CEO and ask, as Transport minister for
an upgrade for your arrangements. Duddin did admit that he had benefited himself from flight upgrades since being elected to parliament in two thousand and one, which he said have also been declared the coalition's transport spokespersons and at a Bridget Mackenzie told reporters that the Senate should set up an inquiry into the reported flight upgrades. She said there are serious questions which only mister Joyce and the Prime
Minister can answer. At the time when she was saying that she claimed she hadn't received a quantus upgrade, but shortly after she did issue a statement confirming she had previously received an upgrade and had publicly declared it. But broadly the Coalition is going in with we need to understand more about what's happened here and if something has happened that was not meant to or that was not declared, they want further investigation.
So one other aspect to this story that the Opposition, particularly Bridget mackenzie, is seeking to understand more and calling for US an inquiry into is a decision by the Albanese government in twenty twenty three to block a bid by Qatar Airways, so a direct competitor of Quantas, to increase the number of flights that they were operating in
and around Australia. I've noticed a particular point that Bridget mackenzie is highlighting is the decision of the Abenese government in twenty twenty three to block Qatar Airways from increasing the number of routes that they flew in and around Australia.
She said during the week, both Prime Minister Anthony Abernesi and Transport Minister Catherine King have to come clean on whether there was any pressure from the Prime Minister or his office to assist Quantas and its partner Emirates in blocking Qatar Airways application for these flights.
Again, that is just an allegation that is being made by the opposition and there has been no confirmation from the Prime Minister that anything like that did take place there.
Well, it's quite the contrary, right, The Prime Minister has come out very directly against these allegations.
Yeah.
So to the point of the upgrades, Alberanzi has said that he publicly declared everything. He said that he only had direct discussions with Alan Joyce over two official flights and that those were publicly disclosed at the time. Here's Anthony Alberze speaking yesterday on the matter.
All of my flights have been declared in an appropriate way, just as Peter Dutton declared his flights or some of his flights. There is a difference between both of us. My flights were commercial with Quantus or Virgin or Emirates. I didn't have to declare any flights on private jets owned by billionaires like Gina rein Hart because I haven't engaged in it.
Meanwhile, ministers in Albanese's government and suddenly heard a bit of it there have been really trying to flip the script a bit here.
In recent days.
We've had Senior Minister Murray what calling the story unsourced rumors being put around by a journalist and has then tried to highlight that Peter Dudden accepted flights from Gina Reinhart's company and said, I think it's equally applicable to ask questions of Peter Dudden about what influenced Gina ryan Hart has over his policies in response to the free
flights that he experienced. So the government's really trying to read direct traffic into having a conversation more broadly about who and what politicians accept in their positions of power. But I don't know if that storyline is going to stick per se. I think that there is a lot of attention here on Anthony Albanesi and what happens next.
It seems like every couple of months there's a news story from across the political spectrum about allegations of conflict of interest and this recurring idea of how do we know if our politicians have integrity? And we know that trust levels in politicians are dropping lower and lower, and it seems to be a really strong theme of the last decade, and it sounds like into the future. That's all we've got time for on today's episode of The
Daily Os. If you enjoyed this episode, we'd love you to give us a rating on Spotify or Apple, or send it to a friend. We'll be back again in your ears tomorrow morning. Until then, have a great day. My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bunjelung Chalcotin woman from Gadighl Country.
The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Straight Island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.