Anthony Albanese defends free Qantas upgrades he has received

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The Prime Minister has defended his relationship with a former Qantas CEO, after reports he asked Alan Joyce for several flight upgrades. Anthony Albanese reportedly received 22 upgrades over a decade, but he says they were all publicly declared.

Transcript

00:00He's declared everything and that there's nothing to see here, but these reports have

00:06come from nine newspapers and a book that's been written by one of their columnists, which

00:11talks about Mr Albanese's relationship with Qantas and in particular, Alan Joyce, the

00:16former CEO.

00:18Now we understand he was given 22 flight upgrades, they are to business class and that was for

00:24personal travel and at times for family members, including his son, Nathan.

00:29And it was also at a time when Anthony Albanese was the transport minister and also the shadow

00:34transport minister.

00:36Now the prime minister's responded to this.

00:38He says that his flights were declared and that that's the important thing.

00:44But there has been some criticism from the coalition and in particular, their queries

00:49are around his relationship with Alan Joyce, given that there was a decision made by the

00:55government a couple of years ago to block Qatar Airways from adding more flights into

01:01the country.

01:02That was something that people were calling for, for more competition, but there was criticism

01:07around the government for not doing that.

01:09We've heard this morning from the workplace relations minister, a senior government minister,

01:13Mari Watt, and he has defended Anthony Albanese.

01:18Anthony Albanese has on several occasions taken on Qantas.

01:22He took them on as the transport minister when they grounded their fleet and went after

01:26unions.

01:27He took them on in opposition and he took on the coalition, who refused to provide any

01:31support to Virgin when it went broke at Qantas' request.

01:35The LNP also sided with Qantas when they sacked their workforce, despite receiving nearly

01:41a billion dollars in JobKeeper.

01:43Labor and Anthony Albanese stood against that.

01:46Minister Mari Watt there, and he's also defended the prime minister on the question about whether

01:51he actually directly called Alan Joyce and asked for these upgrades.

01:55He says, as far as he's aware, that that is just rumour.

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