Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked today.

I want to start by talking about the competitiveness of our aviation sector. What we're seeing is a dire situation here in Australia. Whether it's for leisure or for their commerce, or for work, where Australians need to travel across the country—of course, needing to make use of the flights that are provided by our domestic suppliers—we're seeing a significant rise in costs. Prices went up, naturally, during COVID. We can all understand that, but they haven't come down to the degree that Australians would expect.

Indeed, internationally, we're seeing significant costs for Australians and also to get visitors here to visit some of our tourist destination hotspots across the country—it's not happening. Yet the Prime Minister, when asked a question about this in question time in the House, said that Australia, arguably, actually has one of the most competitive airline industries. I don't know, maybe it's easier for him because, as Prime Minister, he just gets to fly around on the SPA all the time. He doesn't get to experience what Australians are facing, he's a bit out of touch. Anyone who is booking flights or who needs to travel through airports knows that we don't have the level of servicing that existed prior to the pandemic; be that internationally or domestically, it isn't occurring. The Prime Minister is proving yet again that he is out of touch.

This is a significant problem that needs to be addressed. We're not seeing any action by this government in helping to address this. The fact of the matter is that we have other airlines that want to be able to come into Australia to compete and to provide efficient and economical routes in and out of the country—indeed, possibly within Australia—and this government is not facilitating that. The clanger of the week—and it's only Monday—probably goes to Senator Wong in her answer to the question. She said, 'Those opposite might recall that governments don't have the luxury of focusing on vested interests.' She got quite a rise out of this side, because we see this government, time and again, bowing to vested interests, particularly those of the union movement. We're about to have, no doubt any minute now, the industrial relations legislation in the other place. That's a solution looking for a problem—or the problem is a union problem, of course, which is that union memberships are down. So, in repaying their favours to their vested interests, they're introducing this legislation. But I digress!

The reality is that we need a more competitive space in the area of airlines. The government is more than asleep at the wheel; they're actually complicit, I believe, in not facilitating a more competitive environment for Australian airlines, and even Australians, to be able to engage with a competitive environment that would allow for the cheaper flights, and more flights, that would occur. Come to Western Australia and see this. Not many of those opposite do; I realise that we're a long way away over there and there's only one flight that you can get from Perth to Canberra. It's with one airline—there used to be two that operated—so more needs to be done. More needs to be done to improve the competitiveness of our airline system.

That's why we're calling for an inquiry. We're calling for an inquiry into this situation with Qatar and what seems to be a deliberate decision by this government to block them for anti-competitive reasons. So I encourage the government to adopt this inquiry: bring it on and allow it to happen. It could go into other issues—

Senator Sheldon, I know you would love to delve into some of those issues that are occurring in our airline sector! You would very much enjoy the opportunity, no doubt! So bring it on—bring on this inquiry. Let it happen and let's get some serious investigation into what's going on within our airline sector.