Qantas boss Alan Joyce has told a parliamentary inquiry that proposed legislative changes would limit the airline's plans to expand into Asia and as a result would cost jobs.
The Senate's transport committee is examining a bill, sponsored by independent senator Nick Xenophon and the Australian Green's leader Bob Brown, which would ensure Qantas maintained its principal operational centre in Australia.
Mr Joyce kicked off the hearing in Canberra on Friday by stating that nothing Qantas was doing now contravened the existing Qantas Sale Act.
"The bill being proposed would not do more to protect Australia's Qantas," he said.
"It would not protect Australian jobs and it would have the opposite effect."
Mr Joyce said the bill would put the business in jeopardy and threaten Qantas jobs by locking the company inside Australian borders.
"This is protectionism," he said, adding Qantas operated in a global aviation industry.
"If you want to survive and succeed we must be free to pursue global opportunities."
Qantas plans to expand further into Asia and some of those operations would not fly to or from Australia.
"(But) I can assure you that Qantas proudly calls Australia home and we will always do so," Mr Joyce said.
"The vast majority of our operations are here and always will stay here."
The bill also requires the majority of Qantas's heavy maintenance of aircraft, flight operations and training to be conducted in Australia.
Mr Joyce was quizzed about the decision to ground the entire Qantas fleet last Saturday.
Senator Xenophon asked Mr Joyce whether he envisaged, at the company's annual general meeting last Friday, that he would ground the fleet a day later.
"I didn't have any view on the prospect of it," Mr Joyce replied.
He also said it was his decision alone to ground the fleet ahead of a planned workforce lockout on Monday night.
"That was my decision absolutely," he said, adding it was later endorsed by the board.
"I have complete operational discretion.
"I decided to have a board meeting because of the brand implications and the significant implications around this."
Mr Joyce said the board was fully behind his grounding decision.
He said the easiest option would have been to capitulate to the unions.
But forward flight bookings had "collapsed" as the market lost confidence in the airline's reliability, especially as unions had threatened to drag out the industrial dispute.
"We knew we were losing our customers rapidly," Mr Joyce told the hearing, adding that the dispute already had cost the airline 70,000 passengers and $15 million a week.
"The only alternative to me was to bring it to a head."
Mr Joyce said the airline had done "some planning" for a staff lockout ahead of the grounding decision.
However, he denied Qantas had booked 2,000 hotel rooms in Los Angeles before the decision was made.
Mr Joyce admitted it was "a mistake" to continue taking flight bookings from customers after the fleet was grounded.
Online bookings were stopped at 8.30pm (AEDT) on Saturday - more than three hours after the grounding - when management realised its website had not been taken down.
Mr Joyce said Qantas would compensate its customers "above and beyond" that recommended by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
"It was always our intention, and you'll see on Monday what we're doing," he said.
Mr Joyce said there were many conspiracy theories going around that Qantas was preparing for the grounding before the decision was made on Saturday morning.
But they weren't true, he said.
"There were no more hotel rooms booked before this than would have normally been booked on a standard operation," Mr Joyce told the hearing.
The Qantas chief also explained he initially struggled to get hold of Jetstar boss Bruce Buchanan for the board meeting on Saturday.
Three of his public relations department were at the races in Melbourne on Saturday.
"You'd think I would have wanted them to be in Sydney when all this took place," he said.
"They got trapped in Melbourne and had to buy Virgin tickets to get back."
Mr Joyce said, if there had been a conspiracy, that that was woeful planning.
Labor backbencher Doug Cameron interjected: "That could be called an alibi".
The Qantas boss did say, however, that the company had planned for every scenario and that was only to be expected.
"There was a lot of planning in advance but there was nothing of it actioned until we made a decision."
Labor senator Alex Gallacher then grilled Mr Joyce over who he had briefed about the possible action, and when.
The Qantas chief said he'd spoken to ministers, shadow ministers and state politicians.
The airline explained there was a chance the entire fleet could be grounded "at short notice", he said.
"(But) at no stage did I talk to anybody about lockouts.
"We didn't talk to anybody on either side of politics about a lockout."
Mr Joyce said Qantas spent more time briefing the federal government than the opposition in the past few weeks.
Senator Gallacher also asked if Mr Joyce he had discussed with anyone the potential breakup of the company and "the sell-off of the profitable bits to take it out of the market in a private equity way".
"No, I have not," the Qantas chief said, adding that he believed the Qantas group would be strongest if kept together.
But, Mr Joyce, said the proposed Qantas Sale Act amendment "would force us to break up the group" and threatened the airline's viability.
"It would force us to actually sell those component parts of this airline.
"It would take us down that path that would leave Qantas more exposed."
Mr Joyce said that if the bill was passed, the Qantas subsidiary budget airline Jetstar would have to go as would the airline's planned ventures in Asia.
"It would stop us turning the business around," he said.
On the question of the grounding, Mr Joyce provided figures which he said showed bookings had collapsed and action was essential.
"Corporate travel ... in the week of October 17 on the east coast was down 40 per cent on the previous years," he said.
East-west transcontinental bookings were down 14 per cent and the Canberra route was down 20 per cent.
"So, we had a massive collapse of our bookings during that period."
Under questioning from Liberal senator Eric Abetz, Mr Joyce said it was obvious Qantas wouldn't have been able to ground its fleet or announce a lockout if Fair Work Australia had terminated all industrial action after ministerial intervention.
"Section 431 (of the Fair Work Act) would have stopped me taking the industrial action I was taking if it was declared and that would have stopped the lockout," he said.
The airline chief said federal and state governments, as well as the opposition, responded in a "professional and courteous" manner when told of the grounding on Saturday afternoon.
"Everybody was tidy," he said.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard did not ask for more time to consider her position - nor was any offered.
"There was no discussion about changing that timeframe," he said when asked if the prime minister had requested Qantas put things on hold.
"But, to be fair, I did say that we'd made a decision and the airline had to be grounded."
Senator Brown accused Mr Joyce of being "obscure and devious" about the decision to lock out employees.
"You set out in at least the week before grounding the fleet to deceive the government and this parliament by withholding your plan for a lockout" he told the hearing.
Mr Joyce said everyone would have known a lockout was an option.
But, it was always going to be an "absolutely last-resort measure" and management had no scenarios for its timing.
"We hadn't talked to any party about the lockout," Mr Joyce said, adding that the airline had talked to parties about the commercial and operational challenges facing Qantas from a protracted industrial dispute.
The prospect that the fleet could be grounded "at late notice" was discussed with all parties.
Senator Brown said the prime minister and transport minister had been deceived by Qantas because the airline had "deliberately withheld" information about consideration of a lockout.
"I don't agree with that, senator," Mr Joyce responded, adding that the company's prime focus was on continued negotiations with unions.
It was only when the unions threatened to escalate industrial action, following the company's annual general meeting, that the situation became unacceptable.
The lockout decision was made on Saturday morning, Mr Joyce insisted under questioning from Senator Brown.
"We phoned the prime minister's office when that decision was made."
Senator Brown was not impressed.
"You expected that people you were talking to in this parliament should work out that your real plan was a lockout ... and you weren't pointing to that outcome," he said.
"You were very obscure and devious about the fact you were aiming for a lockout."
Mr Joyce rejected the assertion, describing it as "absolutely inappropriate".
Senator Cameron said Qantas itself could have asked Fair Work Australia to terminate all the industrial action under section 424 of the Act.
The section allows the industrial umpire to step in if there's a threat to lives or the possibility of "significant damage to the Australian economy".
"You could threaten to do the lockout and the grounding and satisfy (Section) 424 without actually grounding the fleet and having 70,000 Australians and overseas visitors stranded," Senator Cameron said.
But Mr Joyce said that wasn't the case because until the lockout was announced, Qantas hadn't reached the required threshold.
"We hadn't got to the stage of the national interest," he said.
"We hadn't got to the stage where CASA (the Civil Aviation Safety Authority) was grounding the airline (due to safety concerns)."
Mr Joyce said Qantas would have gone down that path it it had been an option.
"That would have been a lot easier for everybody and it would have been an option we'd have taken."
Mr Joyce was quizzed for close to three hours, despite being scheduled to give evidence for just 90 minutes.
At the end of it all, Senator Sterle told the Qantas chief he'd be asked to give further evidence to the committee at a date to be confirmed.
