The Prime Minister has defended his relationship with a former Qantas CEO, after reports he asked Alan Joyce for several flight upgrades. Anthony Albanese reportedly received 22 upgrades over a decade, but he says they were all publicly declared.
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00:00He's declared everything and that there's nothing to see here, but these reports have
00:06come from nine newspapers and a book that's been written by one of their columnists, which
00:11talks about Mr Albanese's relationship with Qantas and in particular, Alan Joyce, the
00:16former CEO.
00:18Now we understand he was given 22 flight upgrades, they are to business class and that was for
00:24personal travel and at times for family members, including his son, Nathan.
00:29And it was also at a time when Anthony Albanese was the transport minister and also the shadow
00:34transport minister.
00:36Now the prime minister's responded to this.
00:38He says that his flights were declared and that that's the important thing.
00:44But there has been some criticism from the coalition and in particular, their queries
00:49are around his relationship with Alan Joyce, given that there was a decision made by the
00:55government a couple of years ago to block Qatar Airways from adding more flights into
01:01the country.
01:02That was something that people were calling for, for more competition, but there was criticism
01:07around the government for not doing that.
01:09We've heard this morning from the workplace relations minister, a senior government minister,
01:13Mari Watt, and he has defended Anthony Albanese.
01:18Anthony Albanese has on several occasions taken on Qantas.
01:22He took them on as the transport minister when they grounded their fleet and went after
01:26unions.
01:27He took them on in opposition and he took on the coalition, who refused to provide any
01:31support to Virgin when it went broke at Qantas' request.
01:35The LNP also sided with Qantas when they sacked their workforce, despite receiving nearly
01:41a billion dollars in JobKeeper.
01:43Labor and Anthony Albanese stood against that.
01:46Minister Mari Watt there, and he's also defended the prime minister on the question about whether
01:51he actually directly called Alan Joyce and asked for these upgrades.
01:55He says, as far as he's aware, that that is just rumour.