Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Tourism) Share this | Hansard source

There's a really important issue that has been raised by the member for Riverina and, with all due respect to the minister who just spoke, the issue here is transparency. I'll repeat the question to the chamber now, as the minister leaves. What the parliament deserves to know, what the tourism industry deserves to know, what the export sector needs to know and deserves to know is: What advice did the minister get from her department in regard to Qatar's application? What was the department's advice to the minister about what the minister should do in regard to the application that Qatar put in, for quite a modest—she used the word 'modest'—increase in the flight availability that they had? I think it is reasonable for people to assume that, if the advice from the department to the minister was to reject that, then she would make that public because she would have nothing to hide. So the assumption from the tourism sector, the export sectors and the other players in this field is that the advice from the department to the minister was the opposite of what she decided. If that's the case, the sector and this chamber deserve to know whose advice she did accept. If the department's advice was to accept the application for an increase in flights from Qatar and she rejected that, on whose advice was the decision made and for what reason did she take that advice? That's what this is about. This is about transparency. This is about being transparent to the sector and to the airlines—

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