Jennie George (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Environment and Heritage) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have been contacted by a number of constituents who are Qantas workers expressing deep concern about the future of our iconic national carrier. Qantas is a critical economic asset as well as a national icon. I share their concern that the proposed takeover of Qantas by the private equity consortium, Airline Partners Australia, is not in our national interest. Qantas is a strategic national asset which provides essential services. I believe that the national interest issues surrounding the Qantas sale need to be thoroughly examined by a parliamentary inquiry, together with the details of the proposed sale. Many people believe the Howard government is not doing enough to stop Australian businesses being sold overseas and to stop jobs being moved offshore. They worry about the loss of a national icon and the impacts of the proposed sale of Qantas on jobs, rural and regional airline services and safety standards.

Recent polling of marginal seats by the ACTU on behalf of the unions representing Qantas’s 37,000 Australian employees confirms this view. Seventy-nine per cent of those surveyed in the marginal seats say they oppose the sale of Qantas, with 66 per cent saying that they do not think that the Qantas sale is in Australia’s national interest. Seventy-five per cent of voters believe that the takeover of Qantas will mean services to regional areas will suffer and 70 per cent agree that jobs and conditions of employees would be cut. Sixty-four per cent of those surveyed agreed that there is a greater chance that safety will be compromised in the pursuit of profit. The government should stop the proposed sale. If not, at the very minimum they should impose strict and enforceable conditions on the takeover. Vague assurances and promises are not enough. There is a high level of corporate debt in this transaction and all taxpayers should be rightly concerned about the potential risks of highly leveraged buyout deals such as this one. The government needs to act to prevent aircraft maintenance service jobs going offshore. It needs to protect Qantas’s consumer service jobs and to protect airline routes and services to regional Australia. It is time that the government heard the message from Australians across the nation.