Sarah Henderson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Airline Passenger Protections (Pay on Delay) Bill 2024. Firstly, I want to congratulate Senator McKenzie on this excellent private senator's bill. This is a profound demonstration of the work that the opposition is doing because the government won't stand up for airline passengers. The government won't do the work that Australians deserve, and this bill brings justice to airline passengers who have been systematically ripped off by airlines, particularly by Qantas. But there's a long and sordid history to this. It is disgraceful when you consider the background, because it's clear why the government won't support this bill, this excellent bill, which I'll discuss shortly. The government won't support this bill because the government has been doing dirty deals with Qantas.

This is payday for Qantas. This is payday in the form of hundreds of thousands of dollars—in fact, it is probably more than that; it's probably many millions of dollars—as a result of the blocking of flights from Qatar and as a result of the dirty deal over the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, where Qantas delivered hundreds of thousands of dollars in free flights, flying campaigners around this country, with no regard for the many Indigenous Australians who did not support the Voice, who did not support the overreach, who did not support a change in our Constitution which would have profoundly divided Australia. The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, has been more concerned with swanning around on the red carpet with Alan Joyce, pumping up his personal and political relationship, than in standing up for Australians. Frankly, Australians have had a gutful. They've had a gutful of the elites. They've had a gutful of the special deals.

Catherine King is not saying to the Prime Minister: 'Prime Minister, this is not appropriate. We've got to stand up for airline passengers. We've got to do the right thing.' She hasn't had the courage to say to the Prime Minister, her factional ally, 'Prime Minister, we can't keep doing these dirty deals with Qantas.' We know that Catherine King is a weak infrastructure minister. You only have to look at the budget last night, and you only have to look at what she has delivered for the people of Ballarat, her local electorate. Shame on Catherine King. In going through the budget papers last night, looking at the local investments for the people of Ballarat, there was zero. Regional Victorians have been betrayed by the Albanese government on Catherine King's watch, and, for the third budget in a row, there is nothing of any note—