We welcome the High Court’s decision to grant leave to appeal and will work towards presenting our case next year.

At its core, this case is about Qantas’ ability to legally outsource a function to save more than $100 million a year when it was struggling to remain solvent. We’ve always expressed our deep regret that our ground handlers, and thousands more across the group, had to lose their jobs as the pandemic hit us.

There was very little certainty about the pandemic and our recovery when we made this decision, and it remained that way for more than a year afterwards. We ultimately lost more than $25 billion in revenue, so it was inevitable that we had to take significant action.

The Federal Court agreed with our commercial reasons, but could not rule out that avoiding future industrial action was also a factor in the outsourcing. We have always rejected this, which is why are taking our appeal to the High Court.