Dialogue: Facing up only way to treat the anger

By CHRISTINE RANKIN

Is it my imagination, or is there a pattern beginning to emerge?

I couldn't believe my ears a fortnight ago when our Prime Minister described as stupid the action of Aussie baggage handlers who blocked the passage of her aircraft from Melbourne airport. Reportedly, she said she was trying to point out a few facts of life.

The facts of life, in the circumstances, seemed incredibly self-evident. A New Zealand-owned company, one of the pride of our stable, had just been instrumental in bringing about the collapse of a revered Australian airline with the loss of 15,000 jobs. And the New Zealand Prime Minister, faced with that level of grief and anger, could think only of high-tailing it back to New Zealand in an Air Force flying ute.

Perhaps the Ansett staff were asking her to do something we seem to have been singularly unable to do throughout this whole sorry saga - face up to our mistakes.

Rewind the tape. Perhaps the Prime Minister could have got off the plane, convened a meeting with representatives of Ansett staff and simply said: "I understand you are upset, this is a terrible situation. It needs to be worked through. I can't give you anything except my sympathy at this point ... "

At least she would have been seen to show respect for the feelings of those people. But no, they were stupid. People's livelihoods were at stake. With Ansett we were trying to bite off a very big chunk of the Australasian airline industry. It was always going to be tough.

Since then there has been a chorus of blame: the board didn't do due diligence properly, the Air New Zealand members on the Ansett board should have known, Government dithered, Brierley and Singapore Airlines played fast and loose, and so on.

Some of this may be true, but none of it matters. In the eyes of Ansett staff, and most Australians, we were just too cute in taking over Ansett and didn't have the grunt to carry it through. Now they are paying the price.

The person I watched closely as events unfolded is Gary Toomey. I took an instant liking to him. Clearly he realised early on that there were major structural problems at Ansett and, consequently, at Air New Zealand.

His advertising campaigns were designed to build sentiment among staff and customers, to build a platform of confidence around the airline to buy time to solve the problems.

As a chief executive faced with huge, inherited dilemmas, he did for his people what a good CEO would do. He supported them. Gary Toomey put himself on the line. He had joined Air NZ only last January. Previously, by all accounts, he had a glittering career and was regarded as one of Australia's future top CEOs. Now he is facing professional collapse.

The Air NZ saga has told us one thing. If we as New Zealanders are to succeed in the world, we have to work together. If we are going to embark on adventures such as buying airlines well beyond the scale of our small country, we need to bring all our resources together.

Role models that are more concerned to blame, demean and hide, rather than front up and do what is right, do not help.