Qatar airways says it was 'surprised and shocked' by the rejection of its bid to fly additional routes into Australia. The airline is appearing at a parliamentary hearing looking at the federal government's decision to reject its request.
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00:00 It's been an interesting start to the hearing this morning. Qatar Airways making very clear
00:06 its enormous shock at the decision by the federal government to reject this bid to fly
00:11 additional routes into Australia. This discussion is all around the July decision of the federal
00:17 government to reject this request from Qatar Airways. It wanted to fly 28 extra routes
00:22 into extra flights, sorry, into Australia every week. That was rejected. Qatar Airways
00:28 says it was given no reasoning as to why that decision was made. It also interestingly says
00:33 it found out through the media rather than from the Australian government directly. It
00:37 first learned of this decision on July 10 this year. It didn't get correspondence from
00:42 the Australian government and receive the correspondence until July 20, so 10 days later.
00:48 There's been a lot of discussion this morning around possible reasons as to why this decision
00:52 was made. Qatar Airways asked at one point if the federal government ever raised an incident
00:58 at Doha airport on October 2020, where a number of Australian women were invasively searched
01:04 during a police operation at the airport. Qatar Airways says it had no correspondence
01:09 from the Australian government around that or really any other possible reason to reject
01:15 these flights either. It says it's disappointed by this decision because the airline continued
01:20 flying into Australia throughout the COVID pandemic, working to repatriate many Australians
01:26 who were stranded abroad at a point where many airlines quite understandably decided
01:31 not to fly near empty aircraft into Australia. And it says its additional flights by this
01:37 estimation would have been worth $3 billion to the Australian economy over a five-year
01:43 period. Let's hear a little bit of the opening statement from Qatar Airways executive Matt
01:48 Rouse to the committee hearing this morning.
01:51 We currently generate $3 billion of economic benefits to Australia. We create well-paying
01:57 Australian jobs, support Australian travel agents, support Australian tourism and support
02:03 exporters. And we were there when Australians faced tough times. When other airlines turned
02:10 their back on Australia, Australians turned to us. During COVID, the Australian government
02:17 asked us to help Australians return home. In fact, some members of parliament and from
02:22 all sides of politics also asked us to help their constituents return home. And we did.
02:29 Tom Qantas will appear later today.
02:32 Yeah, this is interesting. So Qantas will be appearing as part of this inquiry into
02:37 the government's decision around these Qatar flights. Now, Qantas does have an association
02:42 with this because there has been some suggestion, including from federal government ministers
02:46 at some points, that this decision was made by the federal government, at least in part
02:51 with the interests of Qantas in mind to try and protect Qantas's market share within the
02:57 Australian international aviation market. But of course, it has been an interesting
03:01 few weeks for Qantas on a number of other fronts as well. There have been calls for
03:06 the chair, Richard Goiter, to resign, particularly in the wake of a high court decision made
03:11 a couple of weeks ago, which found that Qantas illegally sacked about 1700 of its ground
03:17 crew during the pandemic. We've heard those calls from the Pilots Union. We've also heard
03:21 them from the Australian Shareholders Association, which represents a small number of Qantas
03:27 shareholders as well. So Mr. Goiter will be appearing at this inquiry. The new CEO of
03:32 Qantas, Vanessa Hudson, will also be appearing. It has been, you'd have to think, a fairly
03:37 rough start to the job for Vanessa Hudson, who took over from Alan Joyce only a few weeks
03:41 ago. The committee had hoped that Alan Joyce would appear as well. He's currently not in
03:47 the country. The committee says he won't be appearing this afternoon, but they do intend
03:51 to summons him upon his return to Australia. Now, that's not necessarily a legal threat
03:57 of any sense. It's really just a very strong suggestion that he should appear. It will
04:02 be issued. Here's the committee chair, Bridget McKenzie, speaking on that earlier this morning.
04:06 I'm not aware of Mr. Joyce's travelling plans, but the committee has been very resolute.
04:13 There are still clear questions for the former CEO to answer for the committee. What conversations
04:20 did he have with the Minister for Transport and the Prime Minister of their offices about
04:25 protecting the dominant position of Qantas? So it's likely the committee will spend a
04:31 bit more time talking to Qatar Airways before it hears from other airlines this afternoon,
04:35 including Virgin, Bonsai Airways, Rex, before Qantas appears later on today.
04:40 [BLANK_AUDIO]