by Jim Eames
No chairman before, or probably since, has taken such an intense interest in on-board catering. While it was an ever-present concern for staff, there is little doubt that Hewitt’s concentration on aircraft catering lifted the standard, quality and presentation of the airline’s in-flight service. He was interested in everything from in-flight service to the standard of the marmalade and yoghurt served to passengers.
Always well briefed, Hewitt developed a fearsome reputation, particularly among those serving on outstations, quizzing them on all matters relating to their responsibilities. Along with their head office colleagues, they quickly learnt that an honest ‘I don’t know but I shall find out’ answer was acceptable to any question. An off-the-top-of-the-head response that proved incorrect could be fatal.
An inveterate traveller, Hewitt spent much time in the air, often to the relief of head office personnel who had developed their own in-house codes with their outstation colleagues. As he boarded a Qantas aircraft in Sydney a five-word telex—‘Our gain is your loss’ would flash around the world.
While George Howling, who had the major responsibility for the areas that attracted Hewitt’s attention, spent much of his time running down the solutions, he also saw another side of Hewitt rarely visible to other staff. Howling remembers him and his wife Nan being invited by Hewitt to spend a few extra days together after a conference they’d attended in Europe.
‘It was absolutely delightful. He was a wonderful dinner companion, never mentioned Qantas once and was charming the whole time. Mind you, once we’d returned to Sydney things returned to “normal,”’ remembers Howling ruefully.
Despite such traits, there was no doubting Hewitt’s ability to grasp important issues.
In his difficult early days setting up a service to Belgrade, John Picken was surprised to find himself standing behind Hewitt as he checked in at the hotel for his room key. Since neither had known the other was in the country, Hewitt explained he’d been in Europe and decided to make an informal and unofficial visit to Belgrade.
‘He said he’d therefore like to have breakfast with me next morning, listed a number of topics, said goodnight and walked off.’
Nervous about what was to come, on reaching his room, Picken poured himself a stiff whisky and prepared some notes for the breakfast encounter. ‘I must admit I was deeply impressed, despite not expecting to see anyone from Qantas he had concisely listed everything of importance that we need to address, a list of subjects already in a logical sequence for discussion.’
In A Certain Grandeur, his bestselling book on the Whitlam years, Graham Freudenberg describes Hewitt thus:
In Hewitt, [Rex] Connor felt he had a kindred spirit, both were strong nationalists, both loners, both impatient of the windy orthodoxies of established channels, both saw themselves as tough minded negotiators, both authoritarians, both more easily able to inspire fear than affection, yet both had great charm in private, both were extremely confident in the ability of their applied intelligence to master any problem.
With his five-year term coming to an end, Hewitt fought a determined battle with the Fraser government to be re-appointed for a further five years. When the government offered him only a one-year extension, he fought even harder, claiming a less-than-five-year appointment was ‘unprecedented’ for a Qantas chairman. In the end he lost, bringing to an end the appointment of public servants into the top job.
Most in Qantas thought it was about time. Even Bert Ritchie, in his last months as chief executive, and not long after Hewitt had been appointed chairman, had compiled a critical summary of the government appointments to the board, and particularly that of chairman.
In a confidential brief to the minister, Peter Nixon, Ritchie highlighted the policy of using the chairman’s appointment as a ‘gift of government’, at the expense of the airline’s commercial or competitive requirements. ‘This has not always been best for Qantas as a company and the many thousands of dedicated employees who are not public servants and have made Qantas their career,’ Ritchie wrote.
Hewitt’s successor as chairman, James Bolton Leslie, was a striking contrast. A decorated war hero and one of Australia’s leading businessmen, Leslie brought a totally different approach to the chairmanship.
Leslie appears to have been a reluctant candidate. Cruising on the Nile when Malcolm Fraser offered him the job, it took a while for his appointment to be confirmed, not least because of some indecision on his part. Having only recently retired as managing director of Mobil Oil Australia, the first Australian to be appointed to the role by the US parent company, he had been looking forward to a much quieter life.
In contrast to the publicity that surrounded the appointment of several of his predecessors, when Leslie finally arrived back in Sydney, he had already cleared immigration and customs before any Qantas staff in the arrivals area recognised their new chairman. Short in stature, with a dry, often self-deprecating sense of humour, he brought a more relaxed atmosphere to the chairman’s role, but also formidable business experience and contacts.
While his predecessor had a testy relationship with the media, Leslie was generous with his time for journalists, willing to give a Qantas view often contrary to the government’s own concept of how the airline should be run. Close to Prime Minister Fraser, he showed little hesitation in taking on the government if he felt the airline was not being treated fairly, even at the expense of offending the responsible minister.
Contrary to many, Leslie believed that even a government-owned enterprise could match others in the commercial environment provided it was well managed, offered salary levels to match other comparative organisations and received government support in similar fashion to major competitors, like Singapore Airlines. Particularly sensitive to the government making political decisions that affected the commercial wellbeing of the airline, he was adamant that, if Qantas was expected to operate efficiently and profitably, and in Australia’s interests, it should be the airline board’s responsibility to make decisions to allow it to do so, not ‘meddling’ in its affairs by government.
And when it came to Canberra, Leslie was seen by some to have another advantage over his predecessor. While Hewitt had an unsurpassed knowledge of how to handle the public service, Leslie’s appointment by a Liberal government could be expected to improve the airline’s relationships with Canberra. But it didn’t take him long to demonstrate there were clear distinctions between the airline’s owners and its board, at one stage taking the unprecedented step of leading the entire board to Canberra to confront the minister, Ralph Hunt, with proof that government policies aimed at allowing domestic airlines Ansett and TAA onto profitable international routes were ‘setting Qantas up for failure’. Bluntly listing nine steps that he believed would ‘reduce Qantas to a shell, ready to be taken over at a bargain price’, he told Hunt the government had already taken five of them.
Leslie and Bert Ritchie’s successor, Keith Hamilton, could be regarded as a near-perfect combination to lead Qantas. While his chairman had no hesitation in fighting the battles against the political influence of the Murdoch and Abeles–led Ansett, Hamilton set out to restore a balance sheet hampered by a perilous debt-to-equity ratio, at the same time setting Qantas on a course for a future he was convinced would be in the Asia-Pacific region. It was a region he knew intimately and had been an integral part of his own rise to the top of the airline.
Hamilton’s appointment as general manager in 1976 immediately brought a much sharper planning and marketing emphasis to the airline, and a management style very much in contrast to that of his former pilot predecessor. His youthful features masked an impressive knowledge of the industry and the ability to encapsulate complex issues into the most simple, erudite terms. Marge Strang, as his personal assistant, was in awe of his ability to dictate board papers in one ‘take’, off the top of his head. A heavy smoker, known for compulsively rattling his cigarettes and lighter in his jacket pocket while talking, he enjoyed a gamble but,
like Turner, appears to have had little personal life outside the airline. Strang says in the ten years she worked for him he never once mentioned anything relating to his personal life and could remember him only making one reference to a domestic issue.
‘He broke into his dictation one day and asked me whether I knew anything about combination fridge-freezers. When I recovered from the initial shock and admitted I couldn’t help him much, that was the end of it.’
While Hamilton attracted great loyalty from those close to him, most would learn to be wary of becoming too close. His Machiavellian traits tended to keep even those closest in a constant state of nervousness and, although he was renowned for his ability to identify those with the talent to reach high positions in the airline, an equal number would fall by the wayside.
‘He would not hesitate to give tough assignments to those younger executives he judged might have future leadership roles in the airline, but at times you could liken it to throwing a batch of them into a vat of hot oil. Those who managed to climb out made it, others slid back from whence they had come, often never to surface again,’ explains one of his closest associates.
Like his mentor Cedric Turner, Hamilton was a chief executive for his time, transforming the airline from its heavy traditional emphasis on flying operations. Although he insisted on being fully briefed when necessary, he left engineering and operations to those he considered most qualified, while he concentrated on marketing, financing and route structure, areas he considered more relevant to the times. In his final year at the helm the airline recorded a record profit of $58 million.
Hamilton’s successor was the airline’s deputy chief executive and chief operating officer Ron Yates, the only CEO in the history of the airline to have been an engineer. One of Australia’s most respected engineers, Yates brought to the job an intimate knowledge of the airline, from the days of its post-war Lancastrians and Constellations through to his close association with the choice of both the Boeing 707 and the 747. Unlike Hamilton, he showed a readiness to present a more public face of the airline, often highlighting its heritage and world standing in speeches to technical forums and through other public appearances. But, like his predecessor, Yates appeared to enjoy the 24-hour-a-day commitment to the job, although occasionally taking it to extremes, once suggesting to technicians installing a new phone system that they include a handset in his office toilet. Once Jim Leslie heard of it, he reportedly talked him out of it.
Yates’s successor, John Menadue, attracted wide popularity among his staff, although he later confessed he found difficulty working with Jim Leslie and the board, a situation that, although the company was recording profits, would lead to a dramatic falling out in 1989. The termination of his contract became a very public dispute, played out in the media spotlight in a situation where there could be no winners.
There was also the vexed case, at least as far as the airline was concerned, of other board appointments. Long regarded as ‘jobs for the boys’ and described by one former Qantas executive as ‘political thank-yous’, Qantas staff, and even the media, often had cause to wonder what some of the appointments brought to the airline, despite the heavy emphasis on their ‘wealth of union experience’ or ‘business acumen’ as individuals.
While some doubtless did make a contribution, many did little beyond utilising the prestige such an appointment brought with it, not to mention the free travel. Staff would often look with disdain at board members’ use of the perks their position offered and how they interpreted them, occasional examples flickering widely throughout the Qantas rumour mill. One director’s wife gained notoriety for arriving for a holiday in Fiji to discover she’d left her bathing cap at home. Obviously finding the local products not to her taste, she had her own flown over.
Another director won dubious renown for compromising the company’s long-standing trust arrangement that allowed in-company mail to be carried on flights without having it subject to customs requirements. Presumably to save the postal expense, he sent his tailored trousers back from Hong Kong, only to have authorities discover them on one of their rare intercepts. Heavy fines followed.
For Roland Wilson at least, one of the perks of office appears to have continued after his retirement as chairman. Not long after he took over as chairman, Jim Leslie is understood to have discovered a consultancy valued at $1 that enabled Wilson to access discounted staff travel. Leslie asked for the contract to be cancelled but whether it was or not is unknown.
It’s hard to imagine Qantas board meetings being other than staid business affairs, although personalities being what they are, they had odd moments of relief.
It was customary for a chief executive to invite a newly appointed senior executive to a board lunch to meet members of the board, and when Hamilton appointed Doug Scott to the senior engineering role, it was Scott’s turn to grace the table. Hamilton was only too aware of Scott’s unflappable demeanour and his ability to call a spade a shovel, so, taking him aside beforehand, Hamilton advised him to play it safe and speak only when spoken to so as to avoid any of Scott’s renowned ‘one-liners’.
As it transpired one of the items on the board agenda that day concerned a proposal to sell one of the airline’s Combi freight 747 aircraft to an African airline that would use it to transport heavy metals out of their country.
Scott had only just sat down to lunch when one of the board members, Mary Beasley, politely asked whether the Combi would be capable of handling such heavy loads, to which the confident Scott replied: ‘You can take my word for it. It will go down the runway like a dog with worms.’
Hamilton’s reaction is not recorded.
Occasionally a board member brought a refreshing change of pace, although in the case of former union man Sir Jack Egerton, political correctness often took a backward step.
Egerton, a big, bluff, though popular Queenslander, was appointed to the board by Whitlam in 1973 and it’s doubtful the board had seen anything like him before.
Tradition had it that when a new appointment attended his or her first board it was customary for them to initially take the seat next to the chairman at the top of the table. When businessman Tristan Antico arrived for his first board lunch, he had hardly settled into his ‘privileged chair’ when Egerton, sitting in his own assigned seat at the far end of the table, announced in a loud voice: ‘Hey Trist, don’t get too bloody comfortable up there. Queenslanders and wogs usually finish up down this end.’
But it would be while in the company of Aboriginal federal parliamentarian Neville Bonner that Egerton made one of his most notorious comments while a director of Qantas Airways.
When the British Concorde arrived in Australia to show its paces in the hope of a firm Qantas order for the supersonic jet airliner, Bonner and Egerton were among the elite group invited to ride the aircraft back as far as Singapore on its way home.
As the Concorde streaked across the sky at 40,000 feet over the middle of Australia, Egerton turned to Bonner and offered: ‘Well, Nev, I guess this makes you the first supersonic boong.’
To his great credit, Bonner burst into laughter, probably evidence of Egerton’s ability to easily cross the politically incorrect divide.
Despite his acceptance of an imperial honour creating some animosity among the Labor heartland, Egerton’s party background would prove a valuable contribution to the board’s deliberations.
UNUSUAL LOADS
17
GUM TREES FROM WHEEL WELLS
‘You mean we’re sending hundreds of Australian gum trees to Athens? You’ve got to be kidding me.’ That was the reaction of one Qantas corporate executive late in 1986 when ordered to head to the New South Wales Forestry Commission’s nursery in Sydney’s northwest and take delivery of 600 examples of Eucalyptus largiflorens.
But had he been a Qantas cargo man, the strangeness of the request would have held no surprise, although even he would have had to acknowledge the origins of the requirement for such trees were a tr
ifle unusual to say the least.
During the 1950s, Athens was a key transit point on the Qantas’ Constellation whistlestop services to London. The Constellations had long gone by the 1970s when a crop of trees on a hillside in line with the airport runway had grown to such a height that they were now presenting Qantas with a problem in the take-off path of its Boeing 747s climbing out of Athens. It’s not that there was a danger of crashing into them, simply that the normal climb-out requirements for Qantas tended to be much more rigid than those that applied to other airlines operating out of Athens, because the presence of the trees restricted the take-off weight Qantas wanted to use on its nonstop flights to Bangkok, particularly through the hot Athens months of July, August and September.
And since restricted take-off weight invariably meant offloading freight and reduced the revenue the aircraft could earn, Qantas chief operating officer Ron Yates tossed the problem to the airline’s manager for Greece, Jim Bradfield.
Bradfield, said Yates, needed to take a ‘personal interest in the removal of the offending trees’.
‘I’m prepared to loan you an axe or a chainsaw if that would expedite the project,’ was one early Yates suggestion.
But when Bradfield broached the subject with Greek aviation authorities, he was in for a surprise, prompting a series of telex exchanges that still exist in Qantas files.
‘You won’t believe this but the offending trees are Australian eucalyptus trees. Source of entry into Greece believed to be from the tyre tread of Qantas aircraft,’ a Bradfield telex to Yates explained.
