Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I inform the Senate that the President has received the following letter, dated 6 September, from Senator Dean Smith:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I give notice that today I propose to move "That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The statement by the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) in its final monitoring report into airline competition in Australia that "a further direction to the ACCC would provide continued transparency and scrutiny of the industry at a time when new and expanding airlines are still trying to establish themselves", demonstrates the need for the Albanese Government to take immediate action to protect consumers and promote competition by reinstating the ACCC airline monitoring regime.

Is the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

I understand that informal arrangements have been made to allocate specific times to each of the speakers in today's debate. With the concurrence of the Senate, I shall ask the clerks to set the clock accordingly.

Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The statement by the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission (ACCC) in its final monitoring report into airline competition in Australia that "a further direction to the ACCC would provide continued transparency and scrutiny of the industry at a time when new and expanding airlines are still trying to establish themselves", demonstrates the need for the Albanese Government to take immediate action to protect consumers and promote competition by reinstating the ACCC airline monitoring regime.

It's my pleasure to speak to this motion proposed by my friend and colleague Senator Dean Smith, my fellow senator for Western Australia. It's not surprising that Senator Smith proposed this motion, not just because it's in his portfolio area of responsibility but also because my home state of Western Australia is so heavily dependent on the airline industry. Western Australia is—we thank goodness for this, on a regular basis—a long way from anywhere. It's certainly a long way from Canberra, and we remember that every time we fly across the Nullarbor, but it's also a long way from anywhere we travel internationally.

Airlines are essential for Western Australians to achieve their personal goals and their business responsibilities, through internal Western Australian travel, travel throughout Australia and travel internationally. The airline industry plays such an important part in Western Australia taking its rightful place as an economic driver of this country. Competition within that industry, and ensuring that competition is maintained and improved, is vitally important for my home state of Western Australia.

Senator Smith rightly raises the ACCC report into the airline industry, looking at what has happened, particularly post pandemic, in terms of moving back to a point where competition is putting downward pressure on prices, which we all want to see for the flying public. I know Senator Smith will go into this in a lot more detail, but the evidence in that report shows that, whilst recovery is underway, the airline industry is yet to return to the position it was in, in terms of competitive frameworks, pre-pandemic. I'll read you the start of the report. It says:

More than a year since the end of the final COVID-19 state border restrictions, the domestic airline industry has not yet managed to recover to pre-pandemic levels of passengers and capacity.

I ask those out there listening to this debate to think about that. The report clearly states that the airline industry has not yet fully recovered.

The international market has also, obviously, been in the media quite a bit over the last week, particularly with regard to the government's decision to knock back additional flights from Qatar Airways. What did the ACCC have to say about the international market? It said:

While the industry has increased international capacity over the past few months, capacity remains below pre-pandemic levels due in part to delays in aircraft and spare parts shortages. Qantas has also reported that demand for international travel remains strong, leading to a mismatch between demand and supply. This imbalance is putting upward pressure on international airfares.

Anyone who's considered visiting relatives or taking a business flight to one of our major trading partners would know this to be the case. In fact, it's something like 51 per cent above 2019 levels. That is a 51 per cent increase between 2019 and a few months ago. That is an extraordinary increase over a short period of time and reflects a market that requires the examination of government.

This is a market that has a single dominant player in Australia—and I don't want to get into the politics of that, but it does have a single dominant player in Australia—a number of smaller players who are trying to add competition to the market and then an international regime where, again, there are limited opportunities for people to shop around. So we have a competitive framework that is not ideal. As Senator Smith's motion clearly states, the ACCC's role in monitoring the airline industry is an important one and one that should continue. It is passingly strange, in a week when we've seen the government knock back more flights from Qatar, that they are refusing to reinstitute this.

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There's something new every week in this joint. In addition to the extraordinary explosion we just heard over here, there's something new every week! This newfound interest from the coalition in competition policy is extraordinary, really. It may be that there's a bit of freelancing going on as they jostle with each other. The failure of the coalition to appoint a replacement for Mr Robert has obviously left a yawning gap in their economic capability—a Stuart Robert sized hole in their economic capability—and people are freelancing searching for it.

I heard in question time Senator Brockman, drawing a very long bow, talking about passenger movements into Perth and live sheep exports. There was a stream of consciousness connection of these ideas, as if the application by Qatar were in relation to Perth. There's obviously a bit of a misinformation thing going on in here with Western Australia, and I'm very confident that Senator Smith won't continue with it, because he only ever tells the truth. Qatar's application had nothing to do with Perth. The Qatari flag carrier had been seeking to add 21 flights, or one extra service per day, into Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, not Perth, not the carry-on that we saw earlier as if this had any relationship to what was going on in Western Australia.

Then we found out that this was not the first time that this application had been declined. A previous minister for transport had, in a similar set of negotiations and discussions, declined the application from Qatar in support of its national flag carrier for additional flights. Who was that transport minister? It was Mr McCormack who declined it on the basis of very similar national interest grounds as have been outlined by the current Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government. So this confected carry-on over the course of this week, as if what is proposed is a sort of free-for-all for which the coalition, if it were in government, would just agree to additional capacity going into Australian airports from a newcomer—that is not the case. It is not the case in terms of any sensible regulation of Australian airlines.

The truth is that the airline industry has been on life support around the world over the course of the last three or four years. Thousands of jets have been furloughed in deserts all across the world. You only had to fly into Alice Springs over the course of 2019, 2020, 2021 or 2022 to see hundreds of big jets parked in the desert as airlines furloughed them. All around the world millions of staff were suspended. Tens of thousands of Australians engaged in our airline sector were suspended and were being supported by the Commonwealth government.

It is true that Australians have been disappointed that our national airline—privately owned, but our national airline—has not met the mark; that is has not met the expectations that customers had of it, that its staff and unions had of it and that, indeed, the Australian government should have had of it. That has been the subject, as it should be, of enormous controversy.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sorry, Minister. Senator Smith, a point of order?

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

I'm just curious to know whether in the last 30 seconds Senator Ayres is going to mention the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and the monitoring report.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Smith, there is no point of order. But good try!

Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What it does is demonstrate Senator Smith's active interest in all of these areas. He's actively engaged in them. None of these other characters are interested in anything but the rhetorical flourish and the opportunism. Don't even get me started on the new-found interest in competition policy over there. I am constantly surprised. But I don't have enough time to get engaged in that particular part of the argument. (Time expired)

Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak to this urgency motion put forward by the coalition. We all know what is at the core of this motion: the decision of the government to block Qatar Airways from expanding their operations in Australia. This decision directly benefits Qantas, a company that just weeks ago posted its biggest profit ever, after being weeks away from bankruptcy during the pandemic and relying on the government to bail it out. It is a company that is facing seemingly endless complaints about delays, cancellations, poor service, anticompetitive measures and poor working conditions. A company that was once known as 'the spirit of Australia' is becoming known as 'the spirit of corporate greed'.

Following the pandemic, our domestic tourism industry was shattered. This was compounded by the 2019-20 bushfires and major floods in just about every state. We need to support our domestic tourism industry. We need people to be exploring in their own backyard. Because Australia is so large, the reality is that we need air travel to do this—I agree with Senator Brockman's comments—but it's expensive. In a cost-of-living crisis, people can't afford the high fares that we are seeing right now, and this is especially true for my home state of Western Australia.

One way that this could be addressed is through the ACCC's airline monitoring regime—thank you, Senator Smith—to protect consumers and promote competition, because what we are seeing from our national airline is not in the best interests of consumers and is inherently anticompetitive. Thank you to Senator Dean Smith for bringing forward this matter of urgency today. The Greens support it.

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

Those people who are looking at my face might sense a bit of disappointment, although I do thank Senator Cox and Senator Brockman for their contributions. This was an opportunity to rise above all of the noise and all of the discussion that has dominated our media and dominated this place over the last few weeks and provide a concrete course of action to do two things: protect consumers and protect competition. I thank Senator Cox for her remarks and I thank Senator Brockman for his remarks.

How curious that at this time of the debate we usually hear from two Labor senators, but they've decided to put only one Labor senator on this issue this afternoon. To be fair, Senator Ayres is a credible spokesperson, but he did not address the issue. Australians are right to ask: why has Prime Minister Albanese done nothing, despite all of the noise on aviation issues, all of the noise and concrete evidence about abuse of consumers and competition? Why has the government not chosen to do one simple thing, which is to ask the ACCC to continue what the ACCC has been doing for the last three years and continue in further reports on the state of competition? In the very last sentence of the ACCC's 12th report, invites the government, invites the government to continue with the monitoring regime. The ACCC says:

A further direction to the ACCC would provide continued transparency and scrutiny of the industry at a time when new and expanding airlines are still trying to establish themselves.

I would like, if the debate went longer, to talk about Qantas, Virgin, Qatar and Emirates, but that's not what's important. This is a tool that improves transparency for legislators, for consumers and for others that are interested. It's no accident that the only people that are opposed to extending the ACCC monitoring regime are—who? The airlines. Some airlines have a fair point about the administrative burden, but let's worry about that after the government takes a concrete step. This is a simple and easy act, and Prime Minister Albanese and the competition minister, Mr Leigh, the member for Fenner, are silent. We have had all this news and all this concern. We've had consumers being ripped off. We've had cancellations, and the government is silent. This could be done overnight. This could be done in the next 30 minutes. We don't know if the Treasurer, Mr Chalmers, or the competition minister, Mr Leigh, have a proposal on their desks at the moment, but if they do, let's act on it. Let's make it happen. It is such an easy thing to do to say to Australian consumers, 'We have heard your concern.'

It is wrong to talk about airline competition in this country in terms of just holidays. People travel interstate, intrastate and internationally. They stay connected with their families not only in good times but also in troubled times. And the diaspora of the Australian community, whether they are the Indians or others, deserve to be able to travel and reconnect and stay connected with their families at fair and reasonable prices. This is a simple thing to do.

Next week, when Senator McKenzie and I bring a bill to the parliament to do what the government will not do, Senator Cox, I hope we can count on your support—not for politics but for consumers and for promoting competition. Senator Roberts, I hope we can count on your support, because transparency is the thing that will keep Australian airlines honest. It will keep the chairmen of their boards honest, and it will keep their CEOs honest. And, more importantly, if we are seeing some positive developments—Rex and Bonza and others—they deserve to be supported. I dispute one of the comments in the ACCC report—they say there is a duopoly in the aviation industry. That is untrue. There is one very dominant market player, and they are called Qantas. There is another player called Virgin, but they are not equal. When people talk about duopolies, the assumption is that they are equal, but they are not equal: one operates with a market share up here, one operates with a market share down here, and the others are trying to get into the market.

We are on the cusp of something very exciting, because the ACCC report says that things are moving in the right direction. The government should act— (Time expired)

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a servant to the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, I support Senator Smith's matter of urgency motion. The level of corporate cronyism and greed in Australia's airline industry is out of control. COVID was used to change the public's perception of what constitutes fair and reasonable behaviour in the airline industry. Fares are up, service is down and luggage is nowhere to be found. One survey found that Australian airlines managed to lose baggage 10 per cent of the time. Qantas international fares are up 20 per cent in two years. International market share has doubled, and profits have followed airfares up and now stand at $2.47 billion. Despite this, Qantas COVID cancellation credits expire on 30 December. Virgin COVID credits expire on the same date. Is it a mere coincidence?

The ACCC recently charged Qantas with taking bookings on flights that were already cancelled. There's a reason for that. Our established airlines have a legacy allocation of airport landing and take-off gates. In order to restrict competition that may bring down prices, airlines schedule fake flights and sell tickets with no intention of operating that service. By informing customers at the last minute of the cancellation, despite knowing of the cancellation for days or weeks in advance, the airline does three things. Firstly, it keeps that slot out of the hands of a new competitor who may compete with them on price or service. Secondly, it allows airlines to squash passengers into flights that become very profitable. The domestic load in March 2023 was 85 per cent. Thirdly, passengers suffer. Everyday Australians miss connections and lose time away from loved ones. Travellers are left to reorganise holidays on the fly, usually costing them more and taking days off their holiday break.

The predatory billionaires that own Qantas shares are perfectly happy with this. Billionaires use investment funds like BlackRock, Vanguard and First State in order to turn Qantas or, more accurately, everyday Australians, into cash cows. As long as they can use restrictive trade practices, like nobbling competitors, as they did with the recent Qatar airlines decision, and as long as they can get away with hogging landing and departure slots, their dividends will grow.

From where do these excess profits come? Everyday Australians of course. Taxpayers contribute yet more. Qantas took $900 million in JobKeeper payments during COVID and, despite record profits, kept them. The ACCC should look at all of these things, not just pricing. The power of parasitic billionaires must be cancelled out through strong government and regulatory action to restore honest competition, ending crony capitalism through restoring free markets and real competition.

Perin Davey (NSW, National Party, Shadow Minister for Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australians are currently paying more for airfares. Reliability is going down. Flight cancellations are up and flights are less frequent. The fact of the matter is that we are now seeing higher airfares and fewer seats on international flights than before COVID. The Albanese government is failing Australian families and businesses by deliberately exempting Qantas, Virgin and the wider aviation sector from its recently announced review of competition policy.

The result of taking ACCC eyes off areas as important as aviation can be seen by what we have seen from our national carrier in recent times. The sorry story of Qantas as it stands today should be a lesson to all corporate entities, but also a lesson as to why it's important to have ACCC monitoring. Their once widely respected reputation is currently pretty trashed. First it started with the refusal of Qantas to allow Qatar additional flights into Australia—allegedly at the blackballing of the Qantas CEO. Then we saw Qantas standing on the moral high ground handing out free seats to 'yes' campaigners for the referendum. Meanwhile they cancelled nearly every flight I had been booked on in the last couple of weeks. That should have been enough to make people think. Then they saw the eye-watering bonus being handed to the departing CEO, who is actually still getting paid as much of a bonus even though he has brought forward his resignation. The poor incoming CEO, who probably thought she was getting the gold-standard job, is now faced with having to rebuild trust as a priority.

The absolute icing on the cake in the saga of Qantas is when the totally independent ACCC announced that it was taking court action, alleging Qantas had advertised, booked and taken money for flights that it already knew it had cancelled. That is what ACCC monitoring can highlight. That's what it can expose. The ACCC has alleged that, for more than 8,000 flights scheduled to depart between May and July 2022, Qantas kept selling tickets on its website for up to 47 days after it had already cancelled flights. People who booked on those flights know only too well the inconvenience, the frustration and the cost of doing business. Qantas treated its customers not as a loyal and valued part of the Qantas family but as disposable and dispensable ticket buyers. This is from a company whose brand was once 24-carat gold in the eyes of the world.

In all of this, the Prime Minister would appear to have been hoodwinked, because he's never missed an opportunity to be seen in the company of the now departed Qantas CEO, and he has fallen hook, line and sinker for the proposal by the aviation industry: 'We don't need to be monitored by the ACCC. We are all good corporate citizens.' Well, Qantas hasn't been acting as a good corporate citizen in recent days.

As important a business to Australia as Qantas is—and in the past it never shied away from competition, either domestic or international—it has become a corporate bully. It should be willing to compete strongly and successfully with the best of international and domestic airlines. I hope the new CEO rises to that challenge and I hope the board, bruised and battered from handing out a $24 million golden handshake, might realise that they need to turn the tables.

Australia does need Qantas. We need Virgin. We need others. We need competition. We need Rex. I need Rex because I fly regionally. We need healthy competition, we need transparency and we need monitoring, and the best way to assure us that we are getting that is to have the ACCC continue its scrutiny and monitoring of the industry as part of its competition roles and responsibilities.

Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to speak on this urgency motion today because, as an accountant who measures things all the time, I know that what gets measured gets improved and that what gets watched and is transparent improves its performance. Yet here we have another example of the Albanese government failing to uphold the principles of transparency and accountability. Why on earth would you exempt a company like Qantas, which has a very large market share and dominates the market here in Australia, from ACCC monitoring? Why would you do that? The Prime Minister could step in if he wanted to and hold Qantas accountable—and, if any company needs to be held accountable at the moment, it is Qantas. There have been so many abuses of market share and market privilege by Qantas recently that it really needs to be called out for its intolerable behaviour, not the least of which is that it has been taking bookings for flights that have already been cancelled. That is just shocking.

Last week, we found out that they had to reverse the decision they'd made not to honour the $500 million in credits owed to people as a result of the COVID crisis, when people had to cancel their flights. Qantas decided to put an arbitrary deadline for when you had to use your own credits—I think it was the end of this year—or you would just lose them. This is Qantas, which got bailed out by the taxpayer, as many big corporations did. Yet again, the big end of town always milks these catastrophes, or so-called catastrophes, for their own gain. I thought the point of democracy was to stand up for the little guy against the big guy, but that's not the case anymore in this country. No, it's always the big guy who gets the free handouts. I thought the Labor Party used to stand up for the little guy—the battlers—but it's not interested in doing that. This Prime Minister is more interested in wining and dining with the big end of town than he is in protecting the little guy—the little guy who wants to fly to another state to see his grandmother or grandfather, or to go to his mate's wedding.

Why can't we have a system whereby we get a fair go in this country for the people who want to travel? It's a big country; we need genuine competition in airfares in this country and we're not getting it. What's the relationship between the Prime Minister and the former CEO—as of five o'clock today, an hour ago—Alan Joyce? Why did Alan Joyce give our Prime Minister's son access to the Chairman's Lounge? What was going on there? What was going on with the Emirates deal? Was that all done so that Qantas would then give free flights to all these people who want to fly around the country with the Voice? Is this something that we need to refer to ICAC, where the Prime Minister has actually done a deal with Mr Joyce in order to influence the outcome of the referendum? That is a question that needs to be asked.

The other issue that we need to highlight is their consistent pattern of failing to inform the Australian people properly. We need to shine a light on the functions of the Albanese government, because this isn't the only time that we have seen the Albanese government not wanting to come clean on how the country is being run. I know that my colleague here in the chamber Senator Cadell has tried to get an inquiry up about the impact of transmission lines on the environment, we have asked for details on aged care and we have asked for the minutes from National Cabinet. Prime Minister Albanese said that if he got into government he would release the minutes of National Cabinet and he hasn't done that.

He also said that he would lower electricity prices. We want the Productivity Commission report on electricity prices under standard benchmarking. Did he support that? No. That's another example of where he doesn't want to be transparent about the way this country is run. The other thing that he said was that he'd have a royal commission into COVID. Has he honoured that pledge? No. That's another example of the Prime Minister not being fully transparent and accountable to the Australian people. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.