Qantas boss Alan Joyce says some border closures ‘make no medical sense’

“It does not seem to be rule-based,” he said. “Or if it is, we don’t understand what those rules, what those facts, what those criteria, what that science is actually determining on this.”

“It feels like there’s no rule-based decisions, it’s just there to inform maybe the politics.”

Mr Joyce called for a uniform framework to be established at a federal level via the national cabinet that guided when borders opened and closed based on COVID-19 case numbers, so businesses knew when and under what conditions interstate travel could restart.

“That will be good for the million people that are employed in the tourism industry,” he said.

“Nobody has an issue with has happened with Victoria – those borders needed to be closed; we’re supportive of what’s happened on the international borders. But we still don’t understand why states with zero cases for a long time have borders closed with states with zero cases.”

Qantas highlighted that excluding write-downs and one-off costs it remained in the black at an underlying level, reporting a $124 million profit, down 91 per cent from last year. Mr Joyce said the company was on track for a full-year profit of more than $1 billion when the COVID-19 crisis struck.

Qantas’ revenue between April and the end of June fell 82 per cent, pushing annual revenue down 20 per cent to $14.2 billion.

“Recovery will take time and it will be choppy,” Mr Joyce said. He said flights to the United States would probably not resume until the end of 2021 given the virus continues to run rampant there.

In June, Qantas said it would axe 6000 jobs, or around 20 per cent of its workforce; retire its remaining 747s ahead of schedule and mothball most of its international aircraft for 12 months in an effort to cut costs.

Around 20,000 Qantas staff remain stood-down from work, from a pre-COVID workforce of 29,000.

Qantas said it collected $267 million in payments through the JobKeeper scheme, with the majority going to stood down workers and the rest used to subsidise the wages of staff continuing to work. It received another $248 million through aviation-specific government support schemes. There was a net benefit to Qantas’ bottom line of $15 million from the $515 million in total government support.

Qantas reported a statutory loss before tax of $2.7 billion and said it would not pay a second-half dividend.