Everything you said is true. There is no culture of accountability. The reasons are two-fold. A union protected workplace which has created an us-and-them mentality between crew, pilots, engineers and management and a senior management style of rule-by-decree. Those people who are less protected i.e. those in H/O management roles have seen fewer-and-fewer resources as management cut-costs and numbers in the only area that doesn't result in all-out confrontation (in the US they refer to this as removing the low haging fruit). As a result standards slip along with moral.

QF is stuck between being a public company and a private company. There is no real incentive to perform since people are paid (except, it must be emphasised, those in senior-management) by position rather than performance. Conversely senior-management are paid grossly inflated salaries and fire-off decrees to those below.