Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the end of a week when the parliament, like the nation, has been gripped by the extraordinary actions of Qantas in grounding its fleet and locking out its workforce, there are still many questions that remain to be answered. Perhaps some of those questions will be answered when members of the Senate conduct an inquiry going to some of those questions.

Much has been made about what the opposition did or did not know in the lead-up to the grounding of the aeroplanes and the locking out of the workforce. There are many in the community who are rightly critical of them, but the real bad guy in this story, as far as I am concerned—and many in my electorate have contacted me on this issue—is Qantas. Some questions really need to be answered, and the first is: why was the action taken? Why did they go to the extraordinary action of grounding their air fleet, doing such immense damage to themselves, their shareholders and their workforce—action which, as far as we can tell, is unprecedented in the world?

We know that on the Wednesday leading up to this extraordinary action the minister himself had the parties in his office, knocking heads together and attempting to broker a resolution of the dispute around wages and conditions. At the conclusion of those discussions, I am advised, not only was there no talk about locking out workers or grounding the aeroplanes but it was thought that a resolution to the dispute was at hand. In fact, this was a finding that even Fair Work Australia, when it conducted its hearing into the dispute on the application of the minister, concurred with. They found that paragraph 14 of their decision in this dispute indicates there are still real prospects for a satisfactory negotiated outcome in all three cases—the prospect of a negotiated resolution in relation to these three proposed enterprise agreements still remains.

Given this, you would have to question what changed between Friday, 28 September and Saturday, 29 September that made Qantas management and their board lock out the workforce and ground the airline. In the words of CEO Alan Joyce, it was unbelievable action—action that many people around the country are still finding it very difficult to understand. Qantas is not a factory or a mine; it is a service provider. It provides an essential service to the Australian community. They ambushed around 68,000 passengers because they could not get their way—they could not manage to convince the representatives of their employees about their plans for the future of the airline.

What is even more extraordinary about this story is that, at the time they locked out the workforce, only one of those unions was engaged, or planning to engage, in industrial action. That was the pilots' union, who were proposing to wear red ties to work in protest against the management actions. I can only say it is a good thing that the CEO of Qantas, Alan Joyce, was not in the chamber today. If he saw all the red ties adorning members of this place, many members might have been very lucky to find their way back to their electorates because he might have seen that as some sort of coercive and concerted action by members in this place in union with the pilots!

The action by Qantas was absolutely extraordinary and the people of Australia deserve some explanation. Qantas did not ground its fleet because of safety concerns arising from maintenance. We know that they did not ground the fleet because of safety concerns. Qantas grounded the fleet because it had decided to lock out its workforce. In its words, it was concerned—quite understandably, I argue—about the way that its employees would react.

What is extraordinary, despite all that went on, is that, on the Sunday after workers were locked out of their workplace and the aeroplanes were grounded, the licensed engineers were hard at work—the very next day, after the decision of the commission, they were hard at work doing the maintenance to ensure that those planes could get in the air as quickly as possible. (Time expired)

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! It being 5 pm, the debate is interrupted.

House adjourned at 17:00