Waiting for a Sydney bus that will never come? I’m blaming Alan Joyce
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Waiting for a Sydney bus that will never come? I’m blaming Alan Joyce
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@ The Museum of Fire.
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Re: Waiting for a Sydney bus that will never come? I’m blaming Alan Joyce
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Re: Waiting for a Sydney bus that will never come? I’m blaming Alan Joyce
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Waiting for a Sydney bus that will never come? I’m blaming Alan Joyce
Malcolm Knox
Journalist, author and columnist
September 2, 2023 — 5.00am
Save
While waiting for another Sydney bus that was late, cancelled, too full to stop, suddenly non-existent, or all four, I was wondering how I could blame the transport minister or her questionable new secretary. Instead, I landed on Alan Joyce.
This was not just the free-floating frustration of an idling mind. Before he was lord of the mile-high underworld, Joyce was a genius-grade mathematician who put his brain to work on what airlines call yield management.
Alan Joyce’s final days as Qantas CEO and Jo Haylen’s early days as NSW transport minister have dominated the headlines for different reasons.
Alan Joyce’s final days as Qantas CEO and Jo Haylen’s early days as NSW transport minister have dominated the headlines for different reasons.CREDIT:
This is the dark art of figuring out how to get the maximum revenue per seat out of the minimum number of services, moving around the parts of differential pricing, aircraft sizes, costs and service frequency until they all come together in one beautiful profit-making symphony.
His brilliance was first recognised at Ireland’s national airline Aer Lingus before elevating him to the top of Jetstar and then Qantas, where his efficiency in the calculus of turning X seats into Y profits made him the shareholders’ darling. These methods were copied throughout the transport world, eventually trickling down to private bus operators also figuring out how to match the least number of services to the highest level of profit before commuters rise in open revolt. These operators won long-term contracts from the NSW Coalition government. And here we are, still waiting for our bus to come.
One of Jo Haylen’s first statements as incoming NSW transport minister was to decry the private contracts that have turned so many Sydney bus shelters into Jetstar departure lounges, full of incensed people going nowhere. (We’re not even passengers. We dream of being passengers.) Unfortunately, the minister said, sharing our umbrage, the contracts could not be undone, and the blame could not be unshifted from the former government.
Outsourcing public services to private providers has become integral to the Australian way of life. The late Alan Jackson, head of BTR Nylex, said that if you need an outside consultant, then you don’t know how to do your job. But when covering up for not knowing how to do your job is how you got there in the first place, outsourcing is a habit that’s impossible to kick.
Shareholders’ darling. Alan Joyce in his Jetstar days.
Shareholders’ darling. Alan Joyce in his Jetstar days.CREDIT: JAMES DAVIES
Consultants provide cover for unpopular decisions, such as sacking workers. “Sorry, I’d have kept you on, but we had an independent expert’s report that said we can’t afford you, so have a good life, and I’ll take that keycard please.”
Consultants provide the arm’s length distance from ridiculous salaries paid to CEOs. A handsomely paid independent report benchmarks our company against other companies’ ridiculous CEO salaries, so there’s literally nothing we can do about it, it’s what we need to outlay for a quality person.
Consultants are especially useful for government departments that have chopped their headcount and now have nobody left to do the lost jobs. Like a wounded wildebeest laying out the welcome mat for the hyenas, the department first pays a consultant for suggesting these jobs be outsourced, and then hires another consultant to do the work that they once did back when they were an employee, now a bargain at twice the price.
If outsourcing government services was the disease, the transport minister seems to have caught it early, outsourcing the job of headhunting a new department boss.
Embattled NSW Minister for Transport Jo Haylen. If outsourcing government services was the disease, the transport minister seems to have caught it early.
Embattled NSW Minister for Transport Jo Haylen. If outsourcing government services was the disease, the transport minister seems to have caught it early.CREDIT: NICK MOIR
The recruitment consultant – at a cost of $125,000 – concluded that the erstwhile Labor apparatchik Josh Murray was a “significant risk”. The minister, getting her job half-right, binned the consultant’s report and appointed Murray anyway. Hurrah for a minister finally making her own call. Out with the independent experts, in with ministerial responsibility!
(Before I go any further down the path of defending the indefensible, a sort-of declaration of a sort-of conflict of interest, as this is eventually all about declaring conflicts of interest. I’ve never met minister Haylen, but do know family members and attended the funeral of her father, Peter, a champion fellow whose opinions on the present matter would have been unvarnished. No tickets were sold, no money changed hands – it was a non-religious service – and while $250 or $500 could certainly buy me, it was neither offered to nor accepted by the minister.)
Unfortunately, the minister’s error was that the consultant’s report, like a NSW bus, was late and out of timetable order. The expert assessment ”significant risk” should be used as convenient cover when you are about to sack someone, not when you have it in mind to hire him.
Loading
As the second act in the drama, an existing upper house inquiry into the relationship between government and external consultants has questioned Murray (Haylen is not planning to appear, having outsourced that function). The inquiry chair, Greens MP Abigail Boyd, makes the good point that if Haylen were dying in a ditch over one principle – taking responsibility for a key appointment, not passing it off to a consultant – she might be winning plaudits. Instead, she will cop it for wasting money on the consultant and then appointing a Labor insider anyway.
“Jobs for the boys!” cries the Coalition, bringing its vast experience to the table. “Misuse of public funds on consultants!”
This is the same Coalition that paid an executive search firm to not recommend John Barilaro to represent the state as its trade envoy in New York, then ignored its advice and tried to give him the job. Experts on probity such as former judge Anthony Whealy KC have described the Murray appointment as a half-Barilaro; transport secretary is a real job and Barilaro’s capabilities, unlike Murray’s, had been on alarming display to the public for a number of years.
But the parallels are unavoidable: the perception of jobs for favoured boys, and appointments based on personal trust and club loyalty. The fact that the transport minister’s choice is also a trusted tribe-mate who bought tickets to campaign events adds a second ditch that any minister would struggle to climb out of.
It’s fair to say that the public is sick of ministers hiring consultants to advertise their inability to do their job. But it’s even sicker of them hiring public servants who operate as members of the team (hello robo-debt). If anyone needs to be independent here, it’s not the outsiders, it’s the insiders. A dependent public service amounts to more than just “bad optics”, that other staple of the Australian way of life. It’s bad government.
If Haylen rejected the executive search firm’s advice and appointed a secretary who could get people off bus stops and onto buses, if she bypassed the headhunters to improve the chronic everyday bottlenecks on our train lines, if she dismissed the consultant’s opinion to give the people of NSW the safe and reliable public transport that they want their taxes to fund, that would not only be good optics, it might even be good government.
But instead we wait for the third act in the melodrama, which is for someone to quit or be sacked. And then an independent inquiry by a consultant on freelance rates to close the full circle, an alpha to omega of not knowing how to do something.
Meanwhile, we still wait for that ghost bus.
Malcolm Knox is a journalist, author and regular columnist.
Waiting for a Sydney bus that will never come? I’m blaming Alan Joyce
Malcolm Knox
Journalist, author and columnist
September 2, 2023 — 5.00am
Save
While waiting for another Sydney bus that was late, cancelled, too full to stop, suddenly non-existent, or all four, I was wondering how I could blame the transport minister or her questionable new secretary. Instead, I landed on Alan Joyce.
This was not just the free-floating frustration of an idling mind. Before he was lord of the mile-high underworld, Joyce was a genius-grade mathematician who put his brain to work on what airlines call yield management.
Alan Joyce’s final days as Qantas CEO and Jo Haylen’s early days as NSW transport minister have dominated the headlines for different reasons.
Alan Joyce’s final days as Qantas CEO and Jo Haylen’s early days as NSW transport minister have dominated the headlines for different reasons.CREDIT:
This is the dark art of figuring out how to get the maximum revenue per seat out of the minimum number of services, moving around the parts of differential pricing, aircraft sizes, costs and service frequency until they all come together in one beautiful profit-making symphony.
His brilliance was first recognised at Ireland’s national airline Aer Lingus before elevating him to the top of Jetstar and then Qantas, where his efficiency in the calculus of turning X seats into Y profits made him the shareholders’ darling. These methods were copied throughout the transport world, eventually trickling down to private bus operators also figuring out how to match the least number of services to the highest level of profit before commuters rise in open revolt. These operators won long-term contracts from the NSW Coalition government. And here we are, still waiting for our bus to come.
One of Jo Haylen’s first statements as incoming NSW transport minister was to decry the private contracts that have turned so many Sydney bus shelters into Jetstar departure lounges, full of incensed people going nowhere. (We’re not even passengers. We dream of being passengers.) Unfortunately, the minister said, sharing our umbrage, the contracts could not be undone, and the blame could not be unshifted from the former government.
Outsourcing public services to private providers has become integral to the Australian way of life. The late Alan Jackson, head of BTR Nylex, said that if you need an outside consultant, then you don’t know how to do your job. But when covering up for not knowing how to do your job is how you got there in the first place, outsourcing is a habit that’s impossible to kick.
Shareholders’ darling. Alan Joyce in his Jetstar days.
Shareholders’ darling. Alan Joyce in his Jetstar days.CREDIT: JAMES DAVIES
Consultants provide cover for unpopular decisions, such as sacking workers. “Sorry, I’d have kept you on, but we had an independent expert’s report that said we can’t afford you, so have a good life, and I’ll take that keycard please.”
Consultants provide the arm’s length distance from ridiculous salaries paid to CEOs. A handsomely paid independent report benchmarks our company against other companies’ ridiculous CEO salaries, so there’s literally nothing we can do about it, it’s what we need to outlay for a quality person.
Consultants are especially useful for government departments that have chopped their headcount and now have nobody left to do the lost jobs. Like a wounded wildebeest laying out the welcome mat for the hyenas, the department first pays a consultant for suggesting these jobs be outsourced, and then hires another consultant to do the work that they once did back when they were an employee, now a bargain at twice the price.
If outsourcing government services was the disease, the transport minister seems to have caught it early, outsourcing the job of headhunting a new department boss.
Embattled NSW Minister for Transport Jo Haylen. If outsourcing government services was the disease, the transport minister seems to have caught it early.
Embattled NSW Minister for Transport Jo Haylen. If outsourcing government services was the disease, the transport minister seems to have caught it early.CREDIT: NICK MOIR
The recruitment consultant – at a cost of $125,000 – concluded that the erstwhile Labor apparatchik Josh Murray was a “significant risk”. The minister, getting her job half-right, binned the consultant’s report and appointed Murray anyway. Hurrah for a minister finally making her own call. Out with the independent experts, in with ministerial responsibility!
(Before I go any further down the path of defending the indefensible, a sort-of declaration of a sort-of conflict of interest, as this is eventually all about declaring conflicts of interest. I’ve never met minister Haylen, but do know family members and attended the funeral of her father, Peter, a champion fellow whose opinions on the present matter would have been unvarnished. No tickets were sold, no money changed hands – it was a non-religious service – and while $250 or $500 could certainly buy me, it was neither offered to nor accepted by the minister.)
Unfortunately, the minister’s error was that the consultant’s report, like a NSW bus, was late and out of timetable order. The expert assessment ”significant risk” should be used as convenient cover when you are about to sack someone, not when you have it in mind to hire him.
Loading
As the second act in the drama, an existing upper house inquiry into the relationship between government and external consultants has questioned Murray (Haylen is not planning to appear, having outsourced that function). The inquiry chair, Greens MP Abigail Boyd, makes the good point that if Haylen were dying in a ditch over one principle – taking responsibility for a key appointment, not passing it off to a consultant – she might be winning plaudits. Instead, she will cop it for wasting money on the consultant and then appointing a Labor insider anyway.
“Jobs for the boys!” cries the Coalition, bringing its vast experience to the table. “Misuse of public funds on consultants!”
This is the same Coalition that paid an executive search firm to not recommend John Barilaro to represent the state as its trade envoy in New York, then ignored its advice and tried to give him the job. Experts on probity such as former judge Anthony Whealy KC have described the Murray appointment as a half-Barilaro; transport secretary is a real job and Barilaro’s capabilities, unlike Murray’s, had been on alarming display to the public for a number of years.
But the parallels are unavoidable: the perception of jobs for favoured boys, and appointments based on personal trust and club loyalty. The fact that the transport minister’s choice is also a trusted tribe-mate who bought tickets to campaign events adds a second ditch that any minister would struggle to climb out of.
It’s fair to say that the public is sick of ministers hiring consultants to advertise their inability to do their job. But it’s even sicker of them hiring public servants who operate as members of the team (hello robo-debt). If anyone needs to be independent here, it’s not the outsiders, it’s the insiders. A dependent public service amounts to more than just “bad optics”, that other staple of the Australian way of life. It’s bad government.
If Haylen rejected the executive search firm’s advice and appointed a secretary who could get people off bus stops and onto buses, if she bypassed the headhunters to improve the chronic everyday bottlenecks on our train lines, if she dismissed the consultant’s opinion to give the people of NSW the safe and reliable public transport that they want their taxes to fund, that would not only be good optics, it might even be good government.
But instead we wait for the third act in the melodrama, which is for someone to quit or be sacked. And then an independent inquiry by a consultant on freelance rates to close the full circle, an alpha to omega of not knowing how to do something.
Meanwhile, we still wait for that ghost bus.
Malcolm Knox is a journalist, author and regular columnist.
Re: Waiting for a Sydney bus that will never come? I’m blaming Alan Joyce
He misses the inconvenient point that bus operators aren't free to cut back services, service standards being set by the government. In reality, it's all a huge government bus service, subdivided into regions with operation and maintenance subcontracted in each region and the farebox going to the government. As with the metro, ferries and trams. A lot of wasted effort for the journalist to write all that when he doesn't even understand the system first. But it's the Herald.
I'm waiting for the anti-"privatisation" campaigners to work their way through government, all the way down to school cleaners. Then what will they do? Do they realise that governments at all levels have been employing contractors since the 19th century? It's not like it was invented yesterday.
I'm waiting for the anti-"privatisation" campaigners to work their way through government, all the way down to school cleaners. Then what will they do? Do they realise that governments at all levels have been employing contractors since the 19th century? It's not like it was invented yesterday.