Winner of the 2025 ABIA Awards, General Nonfiction Book of the Year Financial Times Best Summer Books of 2025 From the must-read journalist on how power, money and influence work in this country, the full story of how one of the nation's favorite brands brought itself to ground. Before Covid, both Qantas and its CEO Alan Joyce were flying high, the darlings of customers, staff and investors. After Covid hit, only money mattered – in particular, the company's share price and extraordinary executive bonuses. Illegally redundant workers, unethical flight credits, abysmal customer service, antique aircraft: these became Qantas' new brand. How did things go so badly wrong? Why were customers at the end of the queue? And how did an increasingly autocratic Joyce constantly get his own way, with the Qantas board and with both Liberal and Labor governments, which handed out over billions in subsidies and protected lucrative flight routes from foreign competition? For the first time, The
