Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) | Hansard source

This motion from the member for Wide Bay sums up with, I think, some very useful statistics the situation with respect to the airline industry, which I think most of us in this House are very familiar with. Whilst I for one was not aware of the precise statistics, nothing in this motion surprises me with respect to the issue of the higher prices that tickets are being sold for, the number of cancellations that have occurred, the number of flights that are arriving late et cetera.

The first point I want to make is on the critical part of the motion which talks about the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission not monitoring the domestic airlines any further. That monitoring ended on 30 June because that is exactly what the previous government had prescribed it ought to do when they introduced the monitoring back in 2020. So it was their decision to end it on 30 June, and that decision was simply continued by the incoming Albanese government.

But the real issue, even with respect to that, is that monitoring the statistics is one thing and actually doing something about it is another. Indeed, I don't know of too many other areas where governments of all persuasions, state and federal, monitor situations and are able to do much more about it. We live, supposedly, in a free-market society where there are no controls about how anyone who provides services operates, and that is clearly the case with respect to the airline industry.

I say to members opposite that, whilst I can understand their concerns about the delays that are occurring right now—we just heard the member for Riverina talking about how he missed attending a wedding because of that—and the price-gouging that is going on, I didn't hear much from them when airline maintenance services were being either offshored or outsourced or when, in the middle of COVID, people like the dnata workers were totally excluded from any support payments. Yet the truth of the matter is that they were Australians, just like those who were getting supported. They were left out, and I didn't hear members opposite standing up for them at the time.

I refer members to a Crikey article that appeared only today, from Michael Sainsbury, which I believe perfectly sums up the situation with Qantas right now. I suggest to members that they take a moment to read the article. I'm not going to go through it, but it certainly sums up the situation with respect to the airline industry and Qantas in particular. It highlights the fact that Qantas is projected to make a $2.4 billion profit this year, or perhaps even a bit higher, whilst at the same time it not only engages in what I think we all know is price-gouging but has offshored most of its maintenance, to the point that not only are delays being caused because the maintenance can't be done here but one has to question whether that maintenance is being done at the same levels as when it was all done in Australia. The places where it is done in Australia have been allowed to run down to the point whereby it would make a huge difference if Qantas actually injected some money into ensuring that those places were given the support that they need. Indeed, it's a concern to me because, quite frankly, we all fly on their planes and the truth of the matter is that they are probably not getting the attention that they should.

I recently spoke to one of my good friends, who is actually an aircraft engineer. He works part time because of his age. He could work full time tomorrow anywhere in Australia because of the shortage of engineers that we have in the industry right now. Again, they are allowed to be run down because all that work was offshored, nobody here bothered to do the training and none of the companies here bothered to do what we would refer to as the apprenticeship training that gets them into the job in the end. The outsourcing, the offshoring and now even the maintenance of the old fleet are all part of the problem of delays, and Qantas know they don't have any real competition. They do what they want to do, and that is causing all the problems that the member for Wide Bay refers to in this motion.

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