Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to pick up on what the members for Fremantle and Kingsford Smith mentioned—the workers at dnata. I spoke earlier about the fact that there were people in the electorate I represent who had approached me about this, in particular Adam a dnata worker from Lethbridge Park and a couple of blokes out at Blacktown who had been affected.

I want to respond to some of the government speakers who said, 'JobKeeper was designed not to support companies owned by other governments.' This is a rewriting of history because the Treasurer made a last-minute decision that affected those workers. As the Transport Workers Union and my colleague the member for Fremantle have rightly and strongly pointed out, these workers were being denied at the last minute.

Before anyone gets the notion that these workers somehow are working overseas I point out that they're not. They're Australian workers on Australian soil, paying Australian taxes. They would have expected that the Australian government would have backed them in, but it didn't.

The only other remark I would make on this is that it's clear that when we've had competition in Australia in the domestic aviation market it has meant that mums and dads could get a better deal on the costs of travel in this country. If one carrier collapses, everyone knows what's going to happen. The cost of tickets is going to skyrocket. The suggestion is now that Virgin is going to be a cut-price carrier. We already had some of them. It will be interesting to see if they emerge. By all accounts it will not be the same Virgin airline that once operated. It will be different. You have to wonder what the state of the aviation market will be.

On top of that, from time to time, the government says that it is willing to put money into coal-fired power stations, but it won't put money into a sector that has been here for a while that is providing and injecting competition. Also—and I note the presence of the member for Bennelong—where is the money for high-speed rail? We have one of the busiest airline corridors on the planet, which goes from Brisbane to Sydney to Melbourne, and the government won't provide another alternative in terms of transport and investment—which I know the member for Bennelong champions quite a lot—that would open up opportunities for workers that might move from one sector, aviation, to another. We need to be able to think long term about the creation of jobs. All this short-term thinking will deny people employment when they need the security of that job longer term. That is why I commend the member for Ballarat's resolution.

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