Joyce has giant Tourism Australia dummy spit

People may get older – but sometimes their behaviour is very similar to that in the sandpit:

Qantas has suspended a $50 million marketing deal with the tourism body, claiming its boss Geoff Dixon was leading a consortium trying to remove current Qantas management and buy the company out, The Daily Telegraph reports.

The airline’s boss, Alan Joyce, reportedly wrote to federal Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson on Tuesday, telling him the national carrier was suspending all future dealings with Tourism Australia.

It is believed Mr Joyce warned the government Qantas would refuse to have any further dealings with Tourism Australia while Mr Dixon – a former Qantas chief executive – was chairman.

Source: SMH/AAP

Apparently, they are not actually removing their $44m support for tourism – just granting it to the state based tourism bodies that sort of federate around Tourism Australia – so its a clayton’s boycott really.

Nah, Nah, na Nah, Nah!

For his usual wonderfully caustic view – see Ben Sandilands on this.