Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury) Share this | Hansard source

There are two very dry words in Australian politics at the moment. One is the word 'productivity', and the other word is 'competition'. I will talk about productivity reforms and why they're so necessary for our economy at another time, but front and centre for many, many Australians now is the unreasonableness, high cost and unreliability of service from the Australian airline industry in delivering important aviation needs to Australian consumers.

I think that, for a long time in Australia, aviation, travel and the connectivity that they deliver have been regarded as luxury items, but, if there's a learning from the COVID experience, it is that aviation has become much more of an essential service for Australians than a luxury good. It is an essential service because we know that increasingly Australians want to be able to travel to stay connected to their families in good times, like Christmas and birthday celebrations, but also in times of tragedy or unforeseen and unfortunate circumstances. That's particularly true of the increasing number of multicultural communities in our country, who don't just want to stay connected to their communities here in Australia but are particularly keen and interested, out of necessity, to stay connected with their families and communities abroad.

It's clear, from the report that Senator McKenzie has delivered to the Senate this afternoon, that competition in the Australian aviation sector needs urgent and immediate reform. It's very curious, in fact, that the government has decided to establish a competition review process, which I've got to say is very unstructured. It doesn't haven't the discipline of priorities, nor does it have the discipline of publicly stated time frames. It's a competition review process that consciously, at the beginning, ignored the importance of aviation issues. There's been a hastily-convened backflip on behalf of the Treasurer, Dr Chalmers, and the government's competition minister, Dr Leigh. They have belatedly decided to include aviation issues in that competition review, but they've not committed to make them a priority of the review's inquiry process, nor established a time line with regard to how and when those aviation considerations will be contemplated by the competition review mechanism. Instead, they're saying, 'Oh, no, we've got a green and white paper process,' which will put these important issues out on the never-never.

I predict with great confidence that we will not see one competition initiative presented to this parliament before the next election—not one. That's despite the COVID experience and everything that it taught us about the importance of aviation in our country, from a business and freight perspective but also from a social perspective, and despite the fact that we have the government's decision—which is friendless—with regard to greater access to an airline like Qatar. Despite all of that, we will not see one positive competition reform initiative brought to this parliament before the next election through the competition review process. That is the government being blind and deaf to the needs of Australian consumers. In the last day or so, as a result of the weekend's very decisive rejection by Australians of the government's key constitutional priority, the government has been quickly trying to make up for lost time. It's frantically now focusing on cost-of-living issues, but it's continuing to ignore the desperate need this country has for significant improvements in aviation competition.

There's one particular initiative the government could take immediately. It doesn't need a review process. It doesn't need legislative reform. The one initiative they could take immediately would be to reinstate the ACCC monitoring regime for the airline industry. The 13th and final report of that regime was released in June. Every single stakeholder that presented to Senator McKenzie's committee of inquiry—other airlines, airport operators, the travel industry—said that the government should reinstate the ACCC monitoring regime, because it was good for the industry, good for transparency and good for scrutiny. What is the one organisation that continues to resist the reinstatement of that ACCC monitoring regime? Guess. It starts with Q, followed by a-n-t-a-s. Qantas is the only organisation in this whole country that does not want that ACCC monitoring regime introduced. And guess who is listening to Qantas. It's the government. Indeed, at the committee inquiry, the Qantas CEO said:

We don't support a continuation of that review, because the findings were not significant.

That was the view the new Qantas CEO had, when in actual fact the report made numerous findings in regard to competition, consumer protections, poor flight regularity and poor service for customers. The Qantas CEO is the head of the only organisation in this whole country, other than the government, that doesn't want to see the ACCC monitoring regime reintroduced. How remarkable! And government senators have the gall to stand up here and argue that Qantas is not abusing its monopoly position in the Australian aviation market by standing over the government, standing over Dr Chalmers, standing over Assistant Minister Leigh and saying, 'We don't want that report, that monitoring regime, reinstated.' What a simple, easy, relatively inexpensive opportunity in the context of the government's huge expenditure! Nothing—it would cost the government nothing, relatively, to reintroduce that and give the industry greater transparency, greater scrutiny and reassure Australian aviation customers that they were not being ripped off, because, if you're an Australian aviation consumer at the moment, your starting position should absolutely be, 'I'm getting lower levels of standards, I'm getting poor reliability and I'm probably being ripped off.' And for someone like myself, who comes from Western Australia, who has to travel across the continent regularly—I do so willingly—and as someone who travels around Western Australia—which I do willingly—I know and I hear about the poor aviation experiences my constituents keep telling me about.

There's another issue in the report, which was canvassed in the inquiry, that has received less attention. I readily accept that it's probably not widely endorsed by many people in our country just yet, but that is the restrictive practice that air cabotage plays on denying a better economic development story and better economic development opportunities for northern Australia. I do not believe, and I don't think anyone in this country believes, there should be wholesale lifting of those restrictions. But I do believe, and I hope that others in this chamber do believe, there's an opportunity to review some routes and look at some opportunities where we can provide greater access to regional Australians living across the north of our continent with better access to freight and better access to passenger flights. There's a real opportunity here, and I think the answer is in giving greater access to low-cost carriers—not the big multinational sovereign-backed carriers but smaller low-cost carriers—to travel into our country to pick up and drop off aviation customers in Kununurra and Derby and Broome and other places across northern Queensland that Senator McDonald will be more familiar with than I.

So, this is a necessary report. I think it has done great work. I compliment Senator McKenzie and Senator Birmingham for their great effort in this. I'm disappointed that Senator Sheldon and others haven't seen the real opportunity for significant improvements in aviation services in our country that this report presents. I hope that others will give it due consideration over coming days. I encourage the government to reinstate the ACCC monitoring report. I seek leave to continue my remarks.