Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

Well, Minister, I do not think it is the right thing to do to throw out thought bubbles over every possible option over three months and dramatically impact the way people think about a company in the way this government has done. If the government were serious about considering the future of Qantas, it would do what a real government would do: carefully and transparently raise the issues in a way which did not actually cause the kind of extraordinary response and outcry that we have seen in the community. Unfortunately, this is not a government at all concerned with governance; it is a government purely concerned with politics and it probably does not deserve the title of government.

We have also seen the Treasurer and the Prime Minister make some extraordinary statements that demonstrate absolute lack of understanding of the issues. We have seen the Prime Minister and the Treasurer in the last few days, for example, with their outrage over what the Qantas management said about the price of carbon. They made some extraordinarily ignorant statements about Qantas's lack of need for funding because of the statement they made. That is an extraordinary attack on a public company—a company that this government should be working quietly, meticulously and seriously to assist through a difficult time. This is not the time for rhetoric, it is not the time for politics; it is actually the time for government and it is about time they got on with it. (Time expired)

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