Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

I want to turn to the components of the budget that go to aviation funding. Aviation is an essential industry in a big country like ours and with a populated nation like ours, and it will be absolutely essential to our economic recovery. We've been very critical of the government's lack of a plan for aviation and the piecemeal approach that the government has taken in relation to the crisis in aviation. In particular, I want to take the minister through some of the decisions the government has made in relation to aviation.

What we are seeing are announcements, almost on a weekly basis, of substantial job losses. We had lots of people in the aviation sector stood down and lots of people in the aviation sector completely unable to access any government support, particularly from JobKeeper. Whole families are involved in this industry. They live in suburbs largely around our major airports and it's been the centre of employment for a very long period of time for many of these people. Even the skilled workers we have in regional airports, because the airports are owned by local councils, were not able to access JobKeeper. Regional councils have said they've been absolutely bleeding money out of these airports, and councils have been trying to ensure that they keep them going, but they are losing really skilled workers each day.

When Virgin entered administration on 21 April, the minister said:

Our objective is to help keep as many employees as possible in their jobs, a second major domestic airline in the sky, prices down and competition maintained so our economy recovers strongly on the other side of the coronavirus pandemic.

Does maintaining a second major domestic airline remain the government's objective? And is that airline Virgin or is it another airline? Appearing on ABC's Four Corners in August, the CEO of Virgin Australia revealed that there is zero doubt that the reborn airline will fly to fewer places. It was later revealed that those regions losing routes would include Uluru, Tamworth, Port Macquarie, Albury, Hervey Bay, Cloncurry and Mildura. Would the minister agree that fewer routes will mean higher fares and fewer services to regional communities, costing jobs across the country? Recently we received some worrying reports regarding the future of Virgin Australia, with the current CEO to leave the corporation in November, this month, and suggestions that the airline will emerge far smaller than before, offering less competition to Qantas and supporting fewer Australian jobs. The minister has repeatedly suggested that a market-led solution would resolve this issue. Well, the market has decided on fewer jobs, fewer routes and less competition. Would you agree with that assessment?

At the same time, we have seen thousands of jobs lost at Qantas, with the airline preferring to now outsource rather than maintain their own workforce, partly because the government has put no conditions at all on the millions of dollars that are going to these companies to ensure that we don't add to the insecurity of work in this nation, yet the government has turned a blind eye to Qantas in fact increasing and adding to substantial job insecurity in this nation—the very thing that we have struggled through during this pandemic. The government could have put conditions on JobKeeper and some of the other aviation support measures that it has put in place. Why didn't it do that? In 2018 the government allowed Qantas catering workers to be outsourced to dnata. It gave permission for that to occur, and yet these 5½ thousand workers were denied government support. They were put on stand-down and were all set to receive JobKeeper, yet the government then changed the regulations and made sure that the regulations were very clear that these workers would not be supported. Minister, the government excluded dnata workers because of the nationality of their employer. Can you confirm that every cent of JobKeeper would have gone into the hands of Australian workers rather than the companies that were employing them? Of course, not everyone in aviation missed out. Certain airlines and owners of private jets did receive support from the government. Can the minister confirm, as I asked him to in question time, that the program has subsidised the luxury private jets of Crown casino, Clive Palmer's Mineralogy and Leppington Pastoral Company? (Time expired)

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