Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Joyce rang me after 2 pm on Saturday afternoon. He informed me that according to him the board had made a decision on Saturday morning that they would lock out their workforce at 8 pm on Monday evening and that they would ground the fleet due to safety concerns at five o'clock that afternoon.

The fact is that, in terms of Mr Joyce's position during that conversation, he indicated very, very clearly that the grounding of the aircraft was as a result of the air operator certificate advice to him that the lockout from this evening at 8 pm would result in safety concerns according to Qantas. Indeed Mr Joyce indicated that that was the case. Mr Joyce had indicated in a number of meetings I had with him that planes had been grounded, and that is public knowledge: seven planes had been grounded.

On 18 October, Qantas released a press release saying:

If this overtime ban continues, we will be grounding even more aircraft.

They did that publicly, but the fact is that the licensed engineers union lifted the overtime ban and all industrial action for three weeks, and the only action that was taking place was pilots wearing red ties. (Time expired)

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