I thought the government might heed the overwhelming calls over the weekend and at least take a step back from this disastrous Qatar Airways decision. I note that this morning the boss of Flight Centre was himself indicating there were rumours around the tourism industry. I suppose there was some false hope that the government might back down. We had the ALP national president, Wayne Swan, out there over the weekend, calling on the government to act and to review the decision and we’ve had the Labor state governments of Queensland and South Australia openly disagreeing with this decision on Qatar Airways. I thought that maybe the government would admit its mistake here, admit that it has made the wrong call and at least review the decision—at least suspend the decision and say, ‘Okay, we’re going to review it now, ask Qatar Airways to resubmit and we’ll reconsider it all.’
But no, they have been stubborn, the Labor Party in Canberra today. It’s the first day back since this all blew up. They have been very stubborn—pigheaded even—that they’re not going to listen to the tourism industry, they’re not going to listen to their own national president and they’re not going to listen to Labor state governments. They’re going to continue to be in bed with one of the biggest companies in this country; they continue to do the bidding of a company that has trashed its reputation among the Australian people. Really, the only conclusion we can make right now is that our government, the Australian government, is in lockstep with Qantas. They’re in lockstep with Qantas on the Voice, they’re in lockstep with Qantas in wanting to keep your prices higher and how you fly and they won’t have any truck with anyone about splitting this relationship between Mr Alan Joyce and Mr Anthony Albanese. It seems to be much stronger than many marriage in this country; they just don’t seem able to be separated! They’re in lockstep together here in support of overcharging Australian consumers and protecting themselves from competition.
It is pretty hard to explain this decision. How can you explain a decision that seems to fly in the face of the recommendation from government departments? That is what we are told at least—that the government’s own departments recommended the extra flights come in. It flies in the face of the evidence that international flight prices are now more than 50 per cent higher than they were before COVID. We clearly need more competition. We need to get those prices back down to, hopefully, a reasonable level for Australians. They have refused to do that in this case. It beggars belief how this decision has been made.
On top of that, of course you have the embarrassing situation where the minister for infrastructure, Minister King, can’t seem to explain the decision at all. She has gone through a black book of different excuses. She must have a Rolodex of excuses for her decision, including the absurd thing she originally said—that it was the human rights record of the Qatari government, even though Qantas partner with Emirates, which is a Gulf state with similar records on labour and all these issues. So why are Qantas and Emirates okay but Virgin and Qatar are apparently anathema? It didn’t make any sense, so she hasn’t repeated that, because that is absurd. She has moved on to saying it is because of the need to protect competition. Her own assistant minister, Stephen Jones, went out there saying it was because they want to keep Qantas’s profits high. I thought we wanted to keep prices low for consumers but apparently this government is about big business and big profits, according to Minister Jones. That was what he had to say about it.
There has been no logical explanation for this. And while it looks like the government want to support the motion today, I do hope that this chamber, the Senate, thinks that we need a bigger investigation in here on what the hell is happening with these decisions. As Senator Pocock mentioned, it is not just the decision here on the Qatari application; there is also the price-monitoring regime, which has been inexplicably finished and ended—terminated. There is also a decision on the slots at Sydney Airport sitting on the minister’s desk. A review established by the former coalition government concluded almost a year ago. It reported to the minister a long time ago, sometime last year.
We have not seen any movement here on the slots at Sydney Airport. That probably is one of the big reasons why we have had so many cancelled flights. I am sure we have all been affected by that. Australians have been affected by it. A massive number of flights have been cancelled and it looks like Qantas and, I should say, Virgin are gaming the slot situation in Sydney to keep their slots available and are not running the flights they said they would.
The cancellation rate for Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin have all been eight per cent and above, whereas an airline like Rex, which does not have the same slot issue as them is running a cancellation rate of only 2.3 per cent. So the evidence is we need more competition. The government has denied the competition. They have not been able to explain that. We need to review this decision. The Senate should do that if the government will not, because we should be getting the cost of living down for Australians.
