Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

I have not noticed any pilots or crew coming in from Abu Dhabi or Singapore or even Auckland. These are the jobs that have been created because Virgin flights are coming to Bundaberg and Hervey Bay; they are Australian jobs. When Qantas is able to have a degree of foreign ownership in its domestic arm, those jobs in Australia will still be Australian jobs. This is because it is not practical to run a domestic airline with staff who are flown in from other parts of the world. It would be against our laws. Of course, you could not be efficient and competitive unless you were actually employing Australian people.

The reality is that these airlines that have had some foreign ownership have made an enormous contribution to Australian aviation. Remember what happened at the time of the Ansett collapse and Hazelton and Kendell were essentially grounded. Well it was a foreign investor, Lim Kim Hai, who came in from Singapore, created Rex and resurrected services to so many regional communities. It was a 100 per cent foreign owned airline. Now Rex employs 1,000 Australians, many in regional communities. Their flight crews, their pilots are all Australian. They are training pilots in Australia in their own academy. The reality is that some of these airlines with foreign shareholdings have an enormous commitment to Australia. They have been prepared to back this country. The Rex partners lost a lot of money getting their airline up and running. It has been to the benefit of this country. The reality is that we can invest. We can have a prosperous aviation industry in Australia. We just need to give it the liberty to be able to achieve the very best possible destiny for itself and for the Australian staff it employs.

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