Reports of Richard Goyder’s demise as Qantas chair have been greatly exaggerated as he braces for vastly different struggles at the AFL and Woodside.
A variety of business news hacks on Friday morning incorrectly read an ambiguous statement from Qantas as saying that Goyder was being replaced forthwith as the airline’s chair.
The ASX announcement at sparrow’s fart revealed former Toll Holdings boss John Mullen would be commencing as a director and chairman-elect of Qantas on Monday — 10 weeks ahead of his scheduled start date.
Rather than admit their original statement was written in legal Urdu, Qantas spin doctors fired out a snippy note saying “there’s no change” to the plan for Goyder to resign “ahead of” the company’s AGM in October
Sorry Qantas pedants, but “ahead of” can mean any time between now and a nanosecond before the AGM.
Yet we respectfully suggest that such weasel words are prudent given Sports Integrity Australia is investigating the player drugs testing regime at the Goyder-chaired AFL.
Investigators were talking to witnesses in Melbourne this week as it probes a secretive regime attacked by independent MP Andrew Wilkie in Federal Parliament on March 27.
Let’s not forget the government blocked Wilkie tabling alleged notes of a meeting between Goyder, former AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan and former Melbourne Football Club president Glen Bartlett, a Perth-raised workplace lawyer and foundation West Coast Eagles footballer.
Wilkie claimed that Bartlett was ousted as Demons chair in 2021 within weeks of raising concerns about the use of illegal drugs with Goyder and McLachlan.
With Parliament sitting for four weeks between now and Mullen’s former start date of July 1, this AFL drama could go anywhere.
But as for the green groups and proxy houses advocating against Goyder’s re-appointment at Woodside meeting next Wednesday, that should be a walk in the park.
McKim sells sense down the Amazon
Senator Nick McKim gained his desired “gotcha” this week when Woolworths chief Brad Banducci’s raised silly arguments in response to questions about return on equity.
But the Greens senator matched Banducci in the boofhead stakes at the supermarket inquiry when he dismissed well structured competition arguments from the outgoing Woolies boss.
In addition to myriad rivals in fresh food, Banducci pointed to the likes of established rivals Bunnings, Chemist Warehouse, Reject Shop and Kmart and the emerging threat from US giant Amazon.
But McKim was having none of this despite Amazon having invested more than $15 billion in Australia since 2011.
“How many Amazon supermarkets are currently in Australia,” the senator asked. “The answer is none, right?”
Good juju needed in luxury apartment complex
An exorcist or aura adjuster may be needed at a swish 11-apartment complex in West Perth, on the south-western border with Kings Park.
Among those to have owned or lived in an apartment are Perth Glory chair Tony Sage, battling glamour couple Yusuf Khan and Cynthia Lu and concrete man Giusepe Calabro.
Calabro’s debt-addled flagship GN Construction has been controlled by the Hall Chadwick insolvency fee machine since February. Cement supplier Hanson has slapped a caveat on the apartment owned by Calabro.
Khan and Lu were renters in the building before their battles began last year.
The Sage’s penthouse still forms part of his besieged Okewood asset structure despite his own recent struggles and his failed attempts to sell the apartment for $9.75m in Perth’s dead property market last decade.
Sage’s control of the Glory was snatched from Okewood and handed to insolvency toecutters KordaMentha in July last year amid a debt battle with soccer’s A-League governing body.
Now the well-heeled family of Glory legend Andy Keogh has been questioning the Glory sale process and want the Supreme Court to put liquidators into Okewood. That blue is back in court on May 16.
We feel a couple of buying opportunities coming on.
Danny’s man hopes Bonza ain’t over the hill
For the sake of someone the Bull owes a big thankyou, we hope that regional carrier Bonza survives problems at its Miami-based owner 777 Partners.
With KordaMentha running the ruler over the airline on behalf of financiers, a HOTT operative persuaded former Perth entrepreneur Danny Hill’s man in Maroochydore to help verify a Bonza jet was marooned at Sunshine Coast Airport.
Glen Cassidy, who runs Hill’s award-winning Sunshine Cove development, promptly sent back some first rate photographs of a jet gathering dust for six weeks after being leased from 777’s part-owned Canadian airline Flair.
Cassidy then revealed he was “totally distraught” about the turbulence around Bonza.
With no one else flying north from the Sunshine Coast, he regularly used Bonza to visit his wife’s family in Townsville and they were eagerly awaiting an Anzac Day long weekend escape.
To illustrate the importance of regional airlines, Cassidy said Bonza flies to regional areas that were otherwise only serviced from Brisbane Airport — a drive of up to two hours from the heavily-populated Sunshine Coast rich with FIFO workers.
But when we asked whether Cassidy would request Monaco-based Hill to bail out Bonza, he returned to his hard-nosed developer persona: “How to chew up a fortune in three easy steps.”
And with Hill originally being from Belfast, we did not dare suggest he rescue 777 from its seemingly ill-fated bid to buy English soccer club Everton.