NSW Treasurer tables secret $50m bid to keep Qantas in Sydney

The NSW government secretly offered $50m in taxpayer funds to Qantas to head off a bidding war with rival states to keep the airline’s global headquarters in Sydney. Under heavy financial pressure from the effects of the global pandemic, Qantas announced last September it was reconsidering the location of its headquarters in a move heavily criticised by federal Trade Minister Simon Birmingham as a “blatant appeal for corporate welfare”. Nevertheless, a week after a confidential package was outlined in a letter from Treasurer Dominic Perrottet to Qantas CE Alan Joyce, the company announced in April that agreements were being finalised to keep the national carrier’s headquarters in NSW. The agreements were to be commercial-in-confidence. However, the Herald can reveal the contents of the Treasurer’s proposal after his letter was included in a trove of documents tabled to State Parliament. It gives the first indication of the lengths the NSW government had been willing to go to, to entice Qantas to remain in Mascot, in Sydney’s inner-south, after the company announced a review of its property footprint. The lure of the company’s 3500-strong workforce sparked a bidding war with Queensland and Victoria. Perrottet’s offer came with strings attached, including that the airline must create an additional 2000 jobs and run its new ultra long-haul flights exclusively out of Sydney for five years. The offer remains the subject of ongoing negotiations even though the three-way tussle ended in early May with Qantas’s statement to the ASX.<br/>