Men Who Killed Qantas - Matthew Benns [51]
He needed to be. The wiry rugby five-eighth had grown into a fiercely competitive man. The Zegna suits sat well on a fit frame pounded into shape with a 5 am run along Balmoral Beach whenever Dixon was not on a plane somewhere.
He was about to have his first really major test as the head of the nation’s number one airline. The first thing he did was follow Strong’s lead and bring in his own team. Two hundred management staff were shown the door but three were promoted – Denis Adams, John Borghetti and Paul Edwards now reported directly to Dixon himself. They joined an elite team loyal to Dixon that included Steve Mann, David Burden and Peter Gregg.
Qantas’s major international competitor, Singapore Airlines, announced it wanted to increase its stake in Air New Zealand to 49 per cent. Air New Zealand owned Ansett. If Singapore Airlines pulled off its bid, it would be able to take on Qantas on its domestic Australian routes with devastating effect. Dixon went on the offensive, telling anyone who would listen that the deal would marginalise Qantas. He knew the people in the corridors of power and he used every contact and emotional tool at his disposal to stymie the Singa pore Airlines proposal. Chairwoman Margaret Jackson joined him in the Oak Room restaurant in Canberra when he argued the Qantas case to Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson, tourism minister Jackie Kelly and Max Moore-Wilton, the influential head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. It was a private company’s convincing rallying cry to the Australian flag. ‘Qantas, through Margaret Jackson and myself, had every right to the point of view, which we held strongly, that the airline industry in this country would not be best served by allowing Air New Zealand, Singapore Airlines, Ansett all to get together,’ said Dixon.28 So persuaded of the case was the previously doubtful Anderson that when he crossed the Tasman to argue the point to New Zealand finance minister Michael Cullen, he was dubbed ‘Minister for Qantas’ by the Kiwis.
Dixon was also lobbying hard. He made a counter offer to buy Singapore Airlines’ share of Air New Zealand and for Singapore to buy Ansett. When it was knocked back Dixon was resolute. Jim Farmer QC, then chairman of Air New Zealand, said: ‘His words were to the effect that he did not believe that the Australian Government, in particular the Foreign Investment Review Board, would approve of Singapore Airlines obtaining such an increased presence in the region. If that wasn’t their view, Qantas would certainly consider taking legal action to ensure that that view prevailed,’ he told the Australian.29 Farmer was in no doubt about what Dixon was doing. ‘He did run interference and it undoubtedly had the effect of creating a degree of uncertainty and instability in the market, which affected Air New Zealand’s share price, which then snowballed into the ultimate result,’ he said.30
Air New Zealand needed a rescue package from its government and Ansett collapsed, going into voluntary administration the day after the September 11 attacks in 2001. It had operated for 66 years. Qantas helped ferry 100,000 stranded Ansett passengers to their destinations and then set about capitalising on the huge gap left in the domestic market. ‘You can say, well, why shouldn’t he?’ Farmer said of Dixon’s actions. ‘But the question really is, they haven’t thwarted us through fair play in the marketplace, they’ve done it through political mechanisms and processes, and that’s a matter, I think, of criticism.’31
Farmer was not alone in this view. The Australian report that carried the interview with him concluded with new market research from a Melbourne institution, which used Qantas as a benchmark. It seemed that by 2002 the research was throwing up the usual words