Peter Allen's stirring song 'I Still Call Australia Home' has been Qantas Airways' unofficial anthem for years. I wonder how many Australians will continue to fly home on Qantas when considering the arbitrary new dress code and rules introduced in April this year.
Some weeks ago I was barred from entering the Qantas Club due to my attire. This entertained me no end. When I gleefully posted my outrage on Facebook I got my fair share of sympathy, though the post didn't quite go viral.
It was vindicated this week, however, when singer Kate Ceberano met a similar fate at the Qantas lounge at Melbourne Airport, en route to a gig in Brisbane following her performance of 'Advance Australia Fair' at the AFL Grand Final.
Perhaps the fact that she mixed up a couple of words during the national anthem bothered the patriotic Qantas, and called into question her Aussie street cred. Whatever the reason, the singer, who has been a member of the club since 1990, was removed for wearing 'inappropriate footwear'.
The offending footwear? A pair of designer thongs, matched with a trendy kimono, slick black pantsuit, jewellery and a funky belt.
Poor Kate. She, and many others no doubt since 1 April, have had to suffer considerable discomfort and embarrassment due to this new dress code.
Now to be perfectly honest, I was never all that fussed about being a member of the Qantas Club in the first place, and only joined when I realised that with the amount of work-related flying I did, my joining would actually save my organisation money.
Also, to be fair, kicking a celebrity out of the Qantas lounge is not exactly a hate crime.
But it seems that Qantas, the so-called 'Spirit of Australia', which charges $500 for membership, is no longer happy to welcome its tired, its poor, its huddled masses yearning to breathe free, and its thonged-bronzed-akubra wearers, thirsty for a VB. (Did you see how I busted out a rhyme there?)
With a dress code that bans thongs, gym gear, and high-vis work wear, it has become an elitist club that only welcomes the very privileged.
My membership is about to expire, and while smuggling some 'baby bottles of booze' out of the lounge in Broome saved me a few bucks on the flight home, my experience of exclusion got me thinking about the more important things in life, like how we judge who is worthy.
The late Fr Ted