Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

It's really good to be here today, from my electorate office in Brunswick, to join this debate on the Transport Security Amendment (Testing and Training) Bill 2019. I'm very glad that we've got the virtual parliament access working so I'm able to contribute to this debate.

As Senator Duniam noted in his second reading speech, this bill 'improves the effectiveness of screening at Australia's security controlled airports and security regulated ports'. We support that, so the Greens will be supporting this bill. I'll come to some specific comments about this bill later. First, I want to take the opportunity, given we're talking about airports, to speak about the state of aviation in these difficult times that we're currently in. The COVID-19 pandemic is, of course, having massive impacts on our society. My heart goes out to people who have lost loved ones, people who are still suffering with the illness, and people who are finding getting through this pandemic really, really tough.

In particular, COVID-19 has had, and will continue to have, significant impacts on our aviation sector, from the people who will be employed doing security checks at the airports through to people who are employed in the airline industry. We've seen a massive drop-off in flights, and, of course, one of our airlines is currently under administration. It is a travesty that our government have refused to support Virgin. They should have taken meaningful action to support one of Australia's two largest domestic carriers during the crisis. Instead, they allowed it to go into administration and we still don't know what state—