Qantas chief talks about cancer, and being gay
Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce has opened up on being gay, having cancer and his $5 million salary, in a revealing interview with a men’s magazine.
Joyce has spoken to GQ magazine about revealing to his family that he was gay, and being treated for prostate cancer last year,The Australian newspaper reported in a preview of the magazine article.
Joyce also defended his $5 million salary, saying pilots are paid more on an hourly basis.
Joyce has shared his life with a New Zealand man since 1999. He talks about the difficulties of growing up gay in Dublin, where his mother was a cleaner and his father worked in a tobacco factory.
In the wide-ranging interview for the April issue of GQ, Joyce says he is paid less to run Qantas than he was to run budget airline Jetstar five years ago.
“What Qantas pays me as CEO is actually very conservative compared with other ASX 100 companies, and if you ranked salaries by hours worked I’m not even the highest paid person in Qantas because the pilots and senior captains get paid a lot more,” Joyce says in the article.
In the interview he also admits to making crucial mistakes in his career, including setting up Jetstar without assigned seating.
Ian Jarrett
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