CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
GRAB A MOP GIRLS: With both Australia’s Reserve Bank and National Carrier airline facing an unprecedented lack of public confidence, it seems that it’s now time to send in a couple sheilahs to clean up the mess left behind by the men.
This comes as Australia’s post-pandemic economic downturn appears to be only exasperated by the cowboy decision-making of the old men in charge of the nation’s once most trusted institutions, who have full mandate to say one thing and do another – as they maintain a system that only seems to make life harder for the bottom rung of society.
In a historic appointment, the next Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, the person charged with bringing down inflation and leading the bank through change, has been named as Michele Bullock.
This comes after a cost-of-living crisis that has left millions of Australians ill-prepared for a series of rate rises that they were promised would not happen by the outgoing governor Peter Lowe.
The mortgage stress and financial horrors faced by the Australian middle class has resulted in the bizarre scenario where the general public actually know the names of the people responsible for these knee-jerk decisions.
Meanwhile, Qantas Chair Alan Joyce has stepped down from the multi-million dollar executive role he has held for close to two decades, and insists Australia’s once treasured airline must focus on its renewal.
He will also be replaced by a woman, which is great for optics, but probably not great for Vanessa Hudson who has just broken through the glass ceiling only to be met with a glass cliff of legal proceedings and shareholder tantrums.
The accelerated handover comes after competition regulator launched legal action against Qantas for allegedly selling tickets to flights that had already been cancelled over a three-month period in 2022.
In newspaper columns and boardrooms right across the country, the expertise of these women is already being questioned, by old men who look a lot like the old men who caused this mess.
However, while these women might be diving on grenades for their predecessors, the good news is that these institutions will remain in tact – leaving board members with the option to give these new feminist icons the Raelene Castle treatment when it’s time to find someone to blame for the last twenty years of complacency and poor decisions.
