Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Financial Services) Share this | Hansard source

The Aviation Legislation Amendment (Liability and Insurance) Bill 2020 will update Australia's civil aviation carriers' liability and insurance framework by increasing the minimum insurance requirement to support associated increases to carriers' liability caps. It also provides regulation-making powers to implement an improved mechanism for updating liability caps and insurance requirements and provides increased clarity on potentially ambiguous provisions in the founding law.

Labor supports this bill, as it takes a sensible approach to increasing the liability limits for Australia's domestic airlines. This framework recognises the unique risks associated with civil aviation. Of course, damages claims in the aviation environment are complex. For this reason, successive Australian governments have implemented a strict liability system for domestic travel that imposes liability on the carrier regardless of fault, negligence or intention while setting a maximum cap that the carrier can be liable for. But with Australia's aviation sector so dramatically disrupted by the COVID-19 crisis we need to do everything we can to maintain and grow consumer confidence in our airlines. I represent the community that has Australia's largest airport in Kingsford Smith airport. Since COVID-19 has hit, the airport community and the employees at the airport, close to 30,000 of them, have been devastated by the downturn in business. When you go to Sydney airport, it's a ghost town. It's been a ghost town. We need to do all we can to ensure that that industry gets back on its feet as quickly as it possibly can.

While procedural in nature, this bill will strengthen the liability and insurance systems applying to our civil aviation sector. Where possible, we take a bipartisan approach to aviation matters and recognise the important role that aviation plays in the lives of Australians, particularly those in our regions. It's an essential industry in Australia as we continue to recover from the crisis, and we will rely upon workers getting into the air as the economy gets off the ground. But we're deeply concerned about the impacts that the response to COVID-19 has had on the aviation sector and its loyal workers. The necessary travel restrictions imposed by governments to limit the spread of COVID-19 have brought our aviation industry to its knees. Around 45,000 people work directly for airlines in Australia, and hundreds of thousands more jobs rely on a strong aviation sector.

But, instead of developing a plan for aviation, the Morrison government has denied support for airports. It denied JobKeeper to dnata workers and failed to act as Qantas sacked thousands of workers. What are those opposite doing to protect workers' jobs in the aviation sector? The answer to that is not much. The Morrison government's not done much to stop Qantas getting rid of its workforce and replacing them with a foreign corporation with workers on lower wages and conditions. This government has stood by and allowed Qantas to sack 2,500 of its loyal ground staff, many of whom had worked for the airline for decades. Qantas has been able to pocket close to $800 million in JobKeeper payments and yet it is allowed to sack its workers during this period while still receiving JobKeeper and to bring in a foreign corporation on lower wages and conditions.

How is that supporting the aviation sector in Australia? How is that supporting aviation workers in this country during this difficult period? Qantas was once a national carrier that we could all be proud of, but now, given what it's done to Australian workers, many are starting to question that loyalty to Qantas. As I said, it's taken around $800 million in taxpayer funds during this COVID crisis. JobKeeper was put in place through Labor's urging as a wage subsidy. It's meant to be there to protect jobs. It's not there for a corporation to exploit for its own means. In Qantas doing what it's done to those workers it has sold out those Australian workers' jobs. On the 100th anniversary of the airline, it's almost impossible to believe that this airline that once was government owned would pocket $800 million worth of subsidies from the government and yet be allowed to get away with sacking its workers. That is not in the interests of the aviation sector. That is not in the interests of Australian workers. Yet this government, the Morrison government, allows them to get away with it.

The worst thing is that the Prime Minister is the member of parliament in this place that has the most Qantas workers living in his electorate and area. He won't even meet with them. He won't even meet with those workers who've lost their jobs and are now really doing it tough during a pandemic and struggling with the prospect of not being able to find work in the short term. It's a once-in-a-century pandemic. Why won't this government do more to support our aviation workers when they need it most?

The government did provide support for Rex, despite that being a majority foreign owned airline, while refusing to do the same for Virgin. Virgin entered voluntary administration, with 16,000 employees and contractors in our tourism and regional economies being affected. So Labor is calling on the government to consider making an equity injection into Virgin. We're also calling on the government to make sure that they develop a plan for aviation, not just for the short term but for the longer term in Australia, and to do more to protect those aviation workers' jobs.

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