Christian Porter (Pearce, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

Qantas has made an intensely difficult decision, but, if airlines are hard to run in the best of times, can we pause and imagine how difficult it has been to run an airline during the period of COVID? The government has invested $2.7 billion in saving thousands and thousands of jobs and keeping our airline industry afloat and reconnected. Obviously, the more that border restrictions can be relaxed, the better that industry will do, which is an absolute imperative. But there is not an ability of the minister to overturn that decision, and I think some caution should also attach to being either defensive of those decisions or overly critical of them. I have enormous sympathy for people who are finding their terms and conditions and their employment changed because of very difficult decisions like that, but I have to be clear: I have no power to overrule a decision like that of Qantas. One of the things that we can't slip to easily in this House is Monday morning quarterbacking and the idea that people here have better acumen, interest or ability to run businesses that are as complicated as those that were the subject of your question.

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