Qatar Airways fronts Senate airline inquiry after extra flights application rejected

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Qatar airways says it was 'surprised and shocked' by the rejection of its bid to fly additional routes into Australia. The airline is appearing at a parliamentary hearing looking at the federal government's decision to reject its request.

Transcript

00:00 It's been an interesting start to the hearing this morning. Qatar Airways making very clear

00:06 its enormous shock at the decision by the federal government to reject this bid to fly

00:11 additional routes into Australia. This discussion is all around the July decision of the federal

00:17 government to reject this request from Qatar Airways. It wanted to fly 28 extra routes

00:22 into extra flights, sorry, into Australia every week. That was rejected. Qatar Airways

00:28 says it was given no reasoning as to why that decision was made. It also interestingly says

00:33 it found out through the media rather than from the Australian government directly. It

00:37 first learned of this decision on July 10 this year. It didn't get correspondence from

00:42 the Australian government and receive the correspondence until July 20, so 10 days later.

00:48 There's been a lot of discussion this morning around possible reasons as to why this decision

00:52 was made. Qatar Airways asked at one point if the federal government ever raised an incident

00:58 at Doha airport on October 2020, where a number of Australian women were invasively searched

01:04 during a police operation at the airport. Qatar Airways says it had no correspondence

01:09 from the Australian government around that or really any other possible reason to reject

01:15 these flights either. It says it's disappointed by this decision because the airline continued

01:20 flying into Australia throughout the COVID pandemic, working to repatriate many Australians

01:26 who were stranded abroad at a point where many airlines quite understandably decided

01:31 not to fly near empty aircraft into Australia. And it says its additional flights by this

01:37 estimation would have been worth $3 billion to the Australian economy over a five-year

01:43 period. Let's hear a little bit of the opening statement from Qatar Airways executive Matt

01:48 Rouse to the committee hearing this morning.

01:51 We currently generate $3 billion of economic benefits to Australia. We create well-paying

01:57 Australian jobs, support Australian travel agents, support Australian tourism and support

02:03 exporters. And we were there when Australians faced tough times. When other airlines turned

02:10 their back on Australia, Australians turned to us. During COVID, the Australian government

02:17 asked us to help Australians return home. In fact, some members of parliament and from

02:22 all sides of politics also asked us to help their constituents return home. And we did.

02:29 Tom Qantas will appear later today.

02:32 Yeah, this is interesting. So Qantas will be appearing as part of this inquiry into

02:37 the government's decision around these Qatar flights. Now, Qantas does have an association

02:42 with this because there has been some suggestion, including from federal government ministers

02:46 at some points, that this decision was made by the federal government, at least in part

02:51 with the interests of Qantas in mind to try and protect Qantas's market share within the

02:57 Australian international aviation market. But of course, it has been an interesting

03:01 few weeks for Qantas on a number of other fronts as well. There have been calls for

03:06 the chair, Richard Goiter, to resign, particularly in the wake of a high court decision made

03:11 a couple of weeks ago, which found that Qantas illegally sacked about 1700 of its ground

03:17 crew during the pandemic. We've heard those calls from the Pilots Union. We've also heard

03:21 them from the Australian Shareholders Association, which represents a small number of Qantas

03:27 shareholders as well. So Mr. Goiter will be appearing at this inquiry. The new CEO of

03:32 Qantas, Vanessa Hudson, will also be appearing. It has been, you'd have to think, a fairly

03:37 rough start to the job for Vanessa Hudson, who took over from Alan Joyce only a few weeks

03:41 ago. The committee had hoped that Alan Joyce would appear as well. He's currently not in

03:47 the country. The committee says he won't be appearing this afternoon, but they do intend

03:51 to summons him upon his return to Australia. Now, that's not necessarily a legal threat

03:57 of any sense. It's really just a very strong suggestion that he should appear. It will

04:02 be issued. Here's the committee chair, Bridget McKenzie, speaking on that earlier this morning.

04:06 I'm not aware of Mr. Joyce's travelling plans, but the committee has been very resolute.

04:13 There are still clear questions for the former CEO to answer for the committee. What conversations

04:20 did he have with the Minister for Transport and the Prime Minister of their offices about

04:25 protecting the dominant position of Qantas? So it's likely the committee will spend a

04:31 bit more time talking to Qatar Airways before it hears from other airlines this afternoon,

04:35 including Virgin, Bonsai Airways, Rex, before Qantas appears later on today.

04:40 [BLANK_AUDIO]

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