Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to commend the member for Clark for bringing on this debate on airline performance and what could be done. It is a good use of the parliament's debating time because the substandard performance of airlines across the country is definitely a hot-button issue. People are rightly angry. The last two years have been truly dreadful. It's not good enough that service standards are so low. The rate of cancelled and late flights is not good enough. It's not good enough that people can't get refunds and are mucked around. What's certainly not good enough is airlines' record of access for people with disability.

There are some signs of recent improvement. That's welcome. On-time performance has slowly improved since even December to January. It jumped from about 63½ per cent to 73½ per cent. That's material. But it's still below the long-term average of about 81 per cent. Prices have come down from their peak. Again, that's welcome. But it's still not good enough.

To be fair to the airlines, in the post-COVID recovery period things were difficult. It was difficult to get the workforce back in. People still had rolling waves of illness and people would call in sick. It was difficult to get all aircraft back into service. But those times are gone. We are well past that. The issue, when you strip it back, is not COVID. It's that the Australian aviation sector has been allowed to drift for way too long. The previous government did nothing substantive for a decade. They did nothing on the slot system at Sydney airport that they now screech about. They did nothing whatsoever on consumer protections. They did absolutely nothing to stand up to Qantas when they illegally sacked thousands of their own staff. They had no blueprint for this critical industry sector's future. The Australian aviation industry has been allowed to drift for far too long, so the government is acting through the aviation white paper.

I want to make a couple of comments. These are personal comments. They're not government policy on what, to be fair, are the very seductive calls for a consumer compensation scheme. I strongly agree we need more consumer protections. That is a focus of the white paper. I am personally a little sceptical, though, about introducing a European-style full compensation scheme here for a couple of reasons. They are things we should think about as we debate this over the next few months. I am concerned that actually what it would mean is that everyone would pay more because the cost of the scheme, like with insurance schemes, inevitably would get factored into the airlines' cost of doing business. That's something we need to think about because it's a commercial reality. Some people who experience unacceptable cancellations or delays would get compensated, but everyone else would pay more for their ticket to fund that scheme. We have to be upfront about that and think, 'Is that what we want?'

The other thing that worries me in the Australian context is that we have an enviable record of airline safety and we need to be really, really cautious before we introduce something that provides perverse disincentive on safety. You do not want airlines cutting corners, thinking, 'We are at two hours and 50 minutes; let's get the aeroplane ready to fly because we don't want to tip over the three hours,' or whatever number is the threshold for compensation. I'm not having a go. It's a good point to debate. But I am personally very sceptical that a full compensation scheme would actually be a good thing in Australia. I think stronger consumer protections and certainly rights to refunds are better.

The green paper and white paper process is happening. We have had more than 450 submissions. They are being looked at at the moment. The papers will be released later this year to guide the sector to 2050 and set the foundations for reform. We want to see through that a more competitive sector. Competition's critical to put downward pressure on prices and to give consumers more choice from destination to destination. We absolutely want to see stronger protections for consumers, which is something that the former government did absolutely nothing about in their wasted decade of division and decay and dysfunction.

We want to keep Australia's world-leading safety record. I believe we should want to see more secure jobs so that people who are, in effect, working permanently full time in the aviation industry can have a full-time job, get a home loan and be treated like other Australians, not be subject to casual, insecure, ever-degrading working conditions.

We want to see a pathway to net zero from the aviation sector. I applaud what the minister and government are doing on bringing the ACCC's monitoring powers into play here. They'll identify any inappropriate market conduct, but, importantly, they'll also directly inform the policy process. So what the ACCC is looking at and finding at the moment will come back into the policy process through the aviation white paper, which is to be released later this year.

I commend, again, the member for Clark for actually bringing a sensible debate. They weren't very good at government, and they're also not very good in opposition if you look at the Notice Paper and what's up for the rest of the day. So well done, you.

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