Federal Transport Minister Catherine King is refusing to appear before the Senate committee set up to examine the Albanese government’s decision to block Qatar Airways from operating additional flights.
The government has been under fire since Minister King rejected the proposal, which would have seen Qatar Airways operating 28 additional flights between Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane each week – which Virgin argued would have cut airfares by up to 40 per cent.
On Sunday, Nationals Senator Bridget McKenzie, the chair of a Senate committee looking into the government’s decision, said she hoped Minister King would “come and explain” the reasoning for her decision.
However, the federal Transport Minister has rebuffed the request to appear before the committee, branding it a “political stunt” and arguing it was longstanding practice for members of the House of Representatives not to appear before Senate committees.
“While Senator McKenzie is wasting time on a political stunt, I am spending time doing the hard work the Coalition never did to set our aviation sector up for the future,” the minister said in a statement.
It is unusual for lower house MPs to appear before Senate committees, but there is precedent for it. In 2014, for example, then-immigration minister Scott Morrison appeared before a Senate inquiry to speak about the government’s boat turnback policy.
In response to Ms King’s refusal to attend, Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham accused the Transport Minister “hiding from scrutiny”.
“This is the height of evasiveness from a minister who should be accountable for the decisions she makes, but is instead hiding from scrutiny,” the leader of the opposition in the Senate said.
Senator Birmingham said that the Senate committee had been established because of the Transport Minister’s “refusal or inability to explain her decision to deny Qatar Airways additional flights” and if she failed to appear before the committee the opposition would use other methods to look into the matter.
The decision to block Qatar Airways from providing additional flights was widely attacked as an attempt to insulate Qantas from competition, with shadow finance minister Jane Hume accusing the government of running a “protection racket” for Qantas.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton has also raised questions about the “very close relationship” between Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and then-Qantas CEO Alan Joyce.
In the wake of the criticism, Minister King claimed her decision had been partly motivated by a 2020 incident in which a group of five Australian women were subjected to invasive strip searches on the tarmac at Doha airport.
(SKY NEWS)
