The travel perks of company directors

I made my way to the Mornington Peninsula on Anzac Day – conveyed by Qantas without incident – for the Sorrento Writers Festival. The writers' festival circuit is a new world to me, and its inhabitants strike me as well ensconced. In my first five minutes in the bustling lobby of Sorrento's InterContinental hotel, I clocked Barrie Cassidy, David Marr and George Megalogenis, like I'd stumbled onto the set of Insiders in 2005. Then came Kerry O'Brien, Norman Swan, Virginia Trioli and Kim Williams. This was Davos (or Disneyland?) for upper middle class boomers. 

Upstairs in the hotel's ballroom at 9am the next morning, 250 bright-eyed festival goers turned out for my session on Qantas and my book, The Chairman's Lounge (which at last count has sold 60,000 copies). There were even two former Qantas board members in the audience. 

It was a lot of fun to return to the deep well of Qantas material and my interviewer Brendan Donohoe – Seven News' veteran Victorian political editor turned Dan Andrews spinner – skilfully kept me from dragging everyone down a rabbit hole of aviation arcanery. Left to my own devices, I'm liable to excrete mind-numbing stats on accelerated depreciation or the LOPA (layout of passenger accommodations) of Qantas aircraft. We all need vices, and tragically, that's about all I've got left. 

One of the parts of The Chairman's Lounge that shocked readers most was the explanation of the opaque fringe benefits enjoyed by Qantas directors: the copious free first class flights for themselves and their families, including for many years after their retirements from the board. Is it any wonder none of them dared to challenge Alan Joyce as he lost the plot? 

Former Qantas chairman Richard Goyder must really miss the roughly $300,000 of complimentary pointy end flying he and his wife were doing each year, and who wouldn't?[[As explained in my book, Qantas accounts for the flight benefits of its board members in its annual reports at a highly discounted rate. Using the retail ticket prices and grossed up for fringe benefits tax, the true financial value of non-executive director flights is approximately 265 per cent of the number reported by the company.]] Never fear! At Woodside Energy, Goyder's last remaining public company gig, he's doing his best to make up the lost ground.

On January 1 this year, Woodside increased the travel allowance paid to its directors by a whopping 50 per cent in one hit. The allowance is paid whenever a Woodside director needs to fly overseas on company business. Where travel exceeds 10 hours – and most of Woodside's ex-Australia operations are in the United States – directors are entitled to a $15,000 payment (it was previously $10,000). Woodside bears the full costs of that travel, of course. This cash is just compensation for the immoderate hardship of bingeing Paramount+ (and Pol Roger) on the flights to and from Houston.

Your most basic Woodside director – and believe me, there are some basic ones – was already trousering $335,000 annually; more if they're chairing a committee. Chairman Goyder was paid $865,000 in 2024.