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

I rise to speak on the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Continuing ACCC Monitoring of Domestic Airline Competition) Bill 2023. There's limited time scheduled for private senator's bills from the opposition. If they believe this is the best use of their time, I despair of the state that we're in at the moment. It's been three weeks since the Albanese government announced it would be directing the ACCC to monitor domestic air passage services, yet three weeks later we are debating an utterly useless and inferior replica of what the government is already doing. As we all know, the ACCC had a similar monitoring function under the previous government. However, those across the way scheduled the monitoring to end in June 2023.

Those opposite had no problem with the monitoring scheme coming to an end until suddenly there was some political point scoring to be made, and now we have this bill, a bill that is inferior to the direction that the Treasurer has already made to the ACCC.

This bill does not provide the ACCC with necessary information gathering powers to seek information and data from relevant suppliers to inform observations and recommendations. So, in fact, the opposition's proposed monitoring scheme will be ineffective and largely useless, whereas the Treasurer's direction is not only superior to this bill but it also improves upon the previous monitoring scheme put in place by those opposite. So we've got a better scheme, a hopeless recommendation from the private members' bill, a previous government that had it finishing in June anyway and now a better scheme being proposed by the government.

It's one thing to have a monitoring scheme, but it's important to collect information and data about prices, costs and cancellations. What the Liberals and Nationals forgot is that what actually matters is what comes next—that is, what the government actually does with that information. They need it.

And what good is it commissioning reports that tell you how dire the aviation industry is, unless you want to politically point score, when you don't want to do anything about it, because that's what they're about. They aren't about doing something about it. It's purely about the facade of politics, not about effect and action, because there have been 12 reports under the previous government—those opposite—which found declining service standards and higher prices but were not acted on. Not one single report! And they come here with a bill which is inferior to what the government's announced under a scheme that they proposed to be abolished in June this year. It really sums up the previous government: it's all about the announcement, never about the delivery.

Clearly those opposite didn't think declining service standards and higher prices were an issue while they were in government. That's why they did nothing with 12 reports. In fact, that's why they did nothing about the wide range of issues in the aviation sector for nearly 10 years. For those 10 years the Liberals and Nationals could have fixed the issues that they suddenly claim to care about now.

In contrast to those opposite, the Albanese government will use the ACCC monitoring to help inform the aviation white paper, which is setting the policy direction for the sector out to 2050. That's the difference between those opposite, who talk about aviation and then think about the opportunity to play politics, and this government, which is focused on a longer term strategy for the sector.

It's a recurring theme when it comes to those opposite and the aviation sector. In February 2021, the former government received the Harris review into Sydney airport's demand management scheme. Maybe even those opposite might have listened, maybe even the shadow minister, and of course they did nothing—