Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

This updated deal was a special arrangement between Australia and Qatar, because the Australian government at the time was clearly concerned about an abuse of market power. I assume that's why it was put into the agreement. That is something that I do not think has been put out there—I don't think there was a media release done at the time—but that was done because of the special circumstances which are there. If you want to keep asking questions about this, I'll go through the whole answer.

I had one extensive conversation with someone about Qatar. It was not someone from Qantas. In terms of the arrangements that are made, the truth is that a lot of the time, when these agreements are put in, they are deferred. There is nothing unusual about that. Indeed, when I was a minister, Qatar had their access doubled from seven to 14 flights in February 2009. There's an aviation green paper process underway to make sure that we get all of the settings right, just as, when I was a minister, I put in place the green paper and white paper which set Australia up with the most competitive aviation market in the world, bar none.

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