Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm talking about jobs; I'm getting on to jobs. If you want to do this—and you guys now have control of industry through your industry super funds—you need to speak directly to the industry funds because we, as the government, no longer own Qantas. I spoke about this in my maiden speech: there is no accountability. Who is accountable if infrastructure is sold? It was the Labor Party that sold Qantas. To be fair, I've got a lot of time for you, Senator Sterle and Senator Gallagher, but it's a bit rich to come in here and have a go at us because we've been trying to help people get through the COVID crisis. We drew a line in the sand because we didn't want to subsidise foreign owned companies.

I've been actively trying to get Qantas to relocate to Queensland to lower costs, because it's cheaper to live in Queensland. The airline was started in Queensland; it's not the New South Wales and Northern Territory air service, it's the Queensland and Northern Territory Air Service. The first time I met Alan Joyce I said, 'When are you taking Qantas back home?' because that's where it belongs. Let me tell you, if it were back in Queensland it would be a lot cheaper to run. We should also bring home QBE. I totally empathise with the fact that this work has been outsourced. I hate outsourcing and, if you read chapter 12 of Machiavelli's The Prince, you'll see it says never outsource. It says never use mercenaries and never use auxiliaries, and I've always subscribed to that. In my own work experience, whenever we outsourced we always ended up in a terrible situation.

However, what I will rebut in this discussion is the idea that the government doesn't care about the welfare of working-class Australians. That is why today we stood up and were happy to push back on what Labor seemed to think—that we shouldn't count those carbon credits, which were earned, fair and square, by Australian workers, particularly those in the agricultural sector and particularly those in south-west Queensland. I mentioned yesterday that they are doing it tough because we're locking up mulga paddocks. I tell you what: your old mate Barry O'Sullivan would be choking on his soup if he knew about what we're doing in great towns like Charleville, Quilpie and Longreach—and I should add that Longreach is the home of Qantas. So before we engage in argy-bargy for the sake of argy-bargy, I would ask you to reflect on this: someone owns Qantas. Go to the shareholders—the people who control the company and control the board. I agree with you on Todd Sampson: I've got no idea what he's doing on the board; I don't know how this bloke got on there. And let's try to find a solution together.