This week has seen a bit of a blow up in the purported controversy about Qatar Airways being denied the opportunity to have more flights to and from Australia. The revelations that Qantas has been treating its customers in what can be charitably described as a kleptomaniacal manner has raised rage at the protection that Qantas gets from the Federal Government.
It appears to many commentators now that the Federal Government’s decision to deny Qatar more flights was significantly influenced by the horror and anger felt by many members of the community at the treatment of more than a dozen Australian women who were taken off a Qatar Airways flight at gunpoint and subjected to invasive examinations in what is commonly referred to as the Doha Airport Incident in October 2020.
I fully endorse the decision by the Federal Government to deny Qatar Airways more access to Australian skies. I do think that the Government has made a major miscalculation in that they were not prepared to be transparent about the reasons for their decision. They should have proudly announced why they were standing up against the appalling behaviour of Qatari government officials in relation to our fellow citizens and owned the decision.
There would have been applause.
Instead, they prevaricated about explaining why they did what I consider to be the right thing, and now there are accusations that they are unfairly protecting Qantas at the expense of Australian consumers. This is an unnecessary storm, and one which has been fanned by the general unpopularity of retiring Qantas CEO Alan Joyce who has presided over recent mega profits, fanned partly by government payments during covid and by price gouging the travel starved public. This has all blown up in the past week, and it unfortunately detracts from the appalling Doha Airport Incident, which has never been adequately addressed by our government.
Whilst Qatar Airways denies any liability on the basis that it was the Qatari police who undertook the actions in the Doha Airport Incident, as recently as last month, it is important for us to consider that the airline itself is owned by the same government which controls the police. The actions of one agency of that government should not be considered as absolving an associated agency of that same government of their liabilities, particularly given the commercial benefits which accrue to the owner, as well as potential prestige.
Qatar is controlled by an autocratic royal family. The assets of the government are, to all intents and purposes, the property and investments of that family. The values and conduct of the agents of the government are very much based on the tone set by their leadership.
In recent years, the term sports washing has been used usually to describe the way that various oil rich middle eastern petro-states (although other regimes also do it) try to deflect attention from their legion of human rights abuses and buy prestige in the Western World through investing in sports. This includes buying sporting teams (particularly in the English Premier League), setting up sporting competitions (such as Saudi Arabia’s LIV golf competition), sponsoring sporting teams, and buying the naming rights for prominent stadia or competitions (here in Melbourne I can name the Emirates Melbourne Cup and Etihad Stadium as prime examples).
Qatar’s biggest and clumsiest attempt at sports washing was to use a campaign of blatant bribery to buy the hosting rights for the 2022 Soccer World Cup. This succeeded. The 2022 World Cup was held in Qatar. However, the process by which they were able to bribe their way to success was so visible that it resulted in serious outrage. Also, by having the unvarnished vanity to go and hold a competition on their home sand, they drew the scrutiny of the world to the labour practices by which the much needed white elephant stadia were to be built, and the repressive nature of the society which soccer fans were about to enter.
Sports washing is not all. I have, in one of my more clever moments, coined the term ‘sky washing’. This is the use of heavily subsided government owned national flag airlines to raise the prestige of that nation, usually to project the false image of progressiveness and tolerance where the reality is that of a harsh human rights abusing regime. I would say that Emirates and Etihad Airlines, owned by two of the major royal families in the UAE, are prime examples of successful sky washing.
Qatar on the other hand, has suffered severe reputational damage due to the Doha Airport Incident. Instead of discussions about the quality of the business class service offer, and the relatively low airfares available, when people talk about Qatar Airways, they talk about how the Qatari police, who are merely another arm of the same government as Qatar Airways, forced a dozen Australian women off a Qatar Airways plane at gunpoint for an invasive search.
This one incident has destroyed billions of dollars of sky washing endeavours, as it is a matter which has revealed the Qatari government to be the appallingly autocratic and misogynistic regime that it truly is. That wipes out all the potential prestige.
So I mark Qatar a fail overall for both sports washing and sky washing.
Lost For Words! 