Bob Katter (Kennedy, Katter's Australian Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to name the members of the Qantas board because this is a name and a shame: Richard Goyder AO, Maxine Brenner, Jacqueline Hey, Belinda Hutchinson AC, Michael L'Estrange AO, Doug Parker, Todd Sampson, Dr Heather Smith PSM, Antony Tyler et cetera. Whatever Qantas once was, it is now the complete opposite.

The tragedy is that many of the people that have been working with them are people that are still dedicated to the founding aspirations of Qantas. It was founded to shrink the tyranny of distance, and I speak with that knowledge because my grandfather was part of not the original but the second group of investors. There were three Katter boys—my father and his two brothers—and two of the three Katter boys died as a result of the tyranny of distance.

Now, let me list of their actions. They had workers sleeping on concrete with blankets at airport baggage handling terminals—that was on national television three times—and they did nothing. They sent 1,500 aeroengineers, the mechanics that fix your aeroplanes, offshore. They sacked 1,500 Australians, and the ramifications for safety are serious. They've outsourced their cleaning and maintenance services to companies employing low-paid foreign workers. They jack up the price of airfares to regional and remote locations to subsidise their international locations. It's $609 to fly from Dubai to London, where there's competition. It's $1,446 from Mount Isa to Cairns, where there is no competition. They sacked 2,000 workers during COVID while taking government support payments worth 2½ thousand million dollars. These people brought out a magazine, and the CEO indulged his own sexual proclivities on two pages of that magazine. What would happen if someone here used a magazine of the parliament to promote their own personal sexual proclivities, whatever they may be?

But those, my friends, are just some of the sins of the Qantas board. Don't keep blaming this dreadful creature, the most hated man in Australia. You approved every single one of those decisions. If there were a corporation that should be shamed by the people of Australia, it is the Qantas board, not the people who work for Qantas. As for saying we all know whatever tribe when they land, in North Queensland 15 per cent are First Australians, but not one single First Australian is employed by Qantas in North Queensland. For an exercise in hypocrisy, that'd take some beating!