Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating told Sky News he would have called Qantas’s chief executive Alan Joyce’s bluff, refusing to intervene in recent Qantas disputes.

Mr Keating attacked the Gillard government for referring the dispute to Fair Work Australia, telling Sky News there would be a very good chance Alan Joyce would have been no more if he was left to sit for a week or two.

“Having taken his airline out, how was he going to get it back?” Mr Keating pointed out.

Speculating that the shareholders would move, causing the board and the unions to do something in an outcome that could be bargained, Mr Keating continued to say “Instead of that we had the commonwealth deciding it, which saved Joyce and let the unions off the hook.”

On 21 October, Mr Joyce grounded the airline and forced it into lockdown as a result of the industrial dispute with unions.  The matter was referred to Fair Work Australia by the government, terminating any industrial action as the arbitration process began.