Opinion: Vanessa Hudson is getting things done

The new Qantas CEO couldn’t be more different to her predecessor, but the evidence suggests her approach is working

Alan Joyce, his disciples would say, got things done – even if he had no shame. Perhaps his most famous moment during the pandemic came when as he tried to lobby Mark McGowan, the WA Premier, to open his state’s hard border. “We are supposed to be all Australians [but] you can’t even travel around your own country,” he thumped. “And there is not a plan in Western Australia for when that is going to open up. It is starting to look like North Korea.” The North Korea jibe, as you’d imagine, didn’t go down too well with the Premier.

“I don’t really get it,” McGowan huffed. “[WA has] the most successful economy in the world, the greatest freedoms of anywhere in Australia for the last two years [and) virtually no one getting sick or passing away. Comparing us to North Korea, I think, might be a bit over the top. A repressive dictatorship that murders hundreds of thousands of people compared with a successful democracy, full of freedoms and the best economy in the world. I think that’s an unfair comparison.”

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