Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Last week we saw the public treated to a live set of the Prime Minister's greatest hits—selective pork-barrelling, corporate welfare and policy by photo-op. After a year of unimaginable anxiety and uncertainty, aviation and tourism industry workers tuned into the morning news to see the Prime Minister grinning at them from an A330 Airbus, brandishing a novelty-sized boarding pass. 'Our ticket to recovery,' he said. He called it the aviation package, except that it wasn't. The Morrison government's ticket to recovery was in fact a cynical attempt to buy votes in marginal seats and give millions more of public money to Qantas and Virgin, all with no requirement that Qantas keep their staff connected to their jobs. This attempt by the government is socialism for the rich and powerful while the working people of this country get next to nothing. There are no guarantees and no obligations on the money that's being handed out. No sector of the economy has suffered more during the COVID-19 pandemic than the aviation sector, yet the Australian government has consistently sold those workers short. It has sold them out again with this announcement. At every opportunity the Prime Minister has had to give these workers a helping hand, he has pulled that hand away.

A recent report from the OECD on COVID-19 support for the aviation industry ranks the Morrison government 18th out of 28 OECD countries. That is 18th out of 28 in the OECD. We're behind the Netherlands, the US, the UK, Switzerland and even Portugal. As a direct result of the Morrison government abandoning the aviation sector Australia has recorded one of the highest rates of job losses in the sector, at over 30 per cent, compared to just 19.5 per cent in the United States and 15 per cent in Singapore. How do you get the airline industry back up and running at short notice to make sure that we're ready after COVID?

The stories have been spoken far and wide, largely about abandonment by this government. There are heartbreaking stories of workers, like catering and cleaning workers at dnata. The Morrison government excluded those workers from the JobKeeper program. There are the ground handlers with decades of dedicated service to Qantas, who saw their roles outsourced in the middle of the pandemic. We heard from Peter Seymour during a recent Senate inquiry. Peter was a Qantas employee for 31 years, towing aircraft between hangars and terminals. In 2019, Peter was diagnosed with stage 5 prostate cancer. He continued to work for Qantas, until the side effects of his radiation therapy made this impossible and he went onto sick leave. In the middle of the pandemic, Qantas took Peter off sick leave—off sick leave! He was forced to return to work to pay the bills, until he was forced to take redundancy. He said:

I was put in this position by Qantas, not COVID—Qantas.

Desiree, another worker who has been outsourced by Qantas, said:

I cannot explain to you what that stress has meant to me, and I don't think my happiness will ever be restored.

Peter and Desiree, like thousands of other workers, have been abandoned by this government for pork barrelling, novelty boarding passes and gimmicky photo-ops. We need 'AviationKeeper' and I urge the Morrison government to finally step up.