Qantas flights: Anthony Albanese’s five excuses for Australians paying 40% more to fly – as a minister makes an extraordinary admission about ‘protecting’ the profit-laden airline

Anthony Albanese’s transport minister has come up with five feeble excuses why Qatar Airways was blocked from operating more flights in and out of Australia, which is making flying more expensive for everyone.

In July, Catherine King banned Qatar’s expansion, defending the decision with a range of vague reasons including the additional flights are ‘not in the national interest’. 

This is despite the decision to stop the Qantas competitor adding an additional 28 flights in and out of Australia is contributing to a staggering 40 per cent premium on airfares, according to Virgin CEO Jayne Hrdlicka.

Assistant treasurer Stephen Jones on Tuesday admitted the ban was simply to protect Qantas, which just announced a record $2.5billion profit last Thursday.

He said letting Qatar fly additional jets into the Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane would ‘design our markets in a way which will make it unsustainable for the existing Australian-based carrier’.

Former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chief Allan Fels slammed the move and said: ‘There’s no secret reason for it. It’s just looking after Qantas.’

Labor has come up with five different reasons for PM Anthony Albanese’s ban on more Qatar Airways flights coming into Australia but one minister admitted it’s just to protect Qantas (pictured the PM with Qantas CEO Alan Joyce)

Transport minister Catherine King (left) has defended blocking Qatar’s expansion with a range of various excuses, including that it was ‘not in the national interest’. Assistant treasurer Stephen Jones (right) has now admitted the ban was simply to protect Qantas, which just announced a record $2.5billion profit last Thursday

The move means Australians are having to pay substantially more to travel as a result, said Flight Centre boss Graham Turner.

He said there was a lack of seats for travellers in and out of Australia and allowing Qatar to step up operations would open up the market and cause airfares to drop. 

‘Any extra capacity, for our industry, is very important,’ he told the ABC. ‘Every extra flight into Australia will help lower these fares.’

He refuted Ms King’s claim that the Qatar ban was good for Australia: ‘It was clearly not in the national interest as far as I can see,’ he said.

‘You could argue that it could have been in Qantas’s interests, it certainly wasn’t in Virgin’s interest, because they have a codeshare relationship with Qatar.

‘I just don’t think it was an argument that held any water.’

,The transport minister claimed while in London in July that the decision to block Qatar was being taken on environmental grounds, saying that she wanted to ‘decarbonise the transport sector’. 

Qatar Airways wants to add 28 extra flights in and out of Australia in a move which it’s said would slash air fares for travellers

Flight Centre boss Graham Turner (pictured) said allowing Qatar Airways to step up operations would open up the market and cause airfares to drop.

The decision to block the extra Qatar flights was slammed by former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chief Allan Fels who said it was ‘just looking after Qantas’

‘I want more capacity for people to be able to enjoy travel, but equally I want to be able to decarbonise the transport sector,’ she said as the ban was announced.

‘Aviation has a role to play in that as well, so there’s a mix of things I look at.’

However critics insist Qantas’s 116-strong fleet of ageing aircraft – 15 years old on average, with many planes 20 years old or more – is environmentally unsound.

Qatar’s jets are on average five years younger and boast the latest in environmentally-sensitive and efficient engine design.

The decision to block the move was initially linked to the 2020 incident at Qatar’s Doha Airport when 13 Australian women air passengers were among 18 travellers intimately examined by investigators after a newborn baby was found dead in a bin.

Labor’s list of excuses to ban Qatar flights

1. The Doha Airport incident 

2. For environmental reasons

3. To protect Qantas jobs

4. Qantas’s investment in new planes

5. It’s ‘not in the national interest’

Some of the women wrote to the government demanding they stop any more Qatar flights and Ms King sent a letter back on July 10 to confirm the ban was coming more than two weeks before it was officially announced on July 26.

However that Doha incident was later officially dismissed as having any played any part in the reasoning for the decision.

Ms King then insisted the ban would protect Qantas jobs.

At question time in parliament on August 9, she said: ‘We will always consider the need to ensure that there are long-term well-paid secure jobs for Australians in the aviation sector when we are making this decision.’

But unions lashed that claim after the airline sacked 1700 ground staff during Covid and had previously axed 8000 other workers even before the pandemic.

She also said the ban was to safeguard Qantas’s investment in the new fleet of planes it has on order, with 169 new aircraft set to come into service by 2030.

It includes three Boeing 787-9s to arrive by the end of 2023, 29 Airbus A220s and 20 Airbus A321-XLRs due to take off in 2024, and 12 Airbus A350s set to come in 2025.

‘Qantas has just purchased brand new planes – that’s at a significant cost,’ she told a Cairns radio station two weeks ago. 

‘They’re bigger planes, they’re quieter planes – better for the environment, so we’re going to start to see a lot of that.’

But critics say the government should not be protecting a private company and helping it to its record $2.5billion profit, after having just been given $2.7billion in government handouts during Covid.

The government officially dismissed Qatar’s application as not being in the national interest when it was finalised last month.

Ms King reiterated that message on Monday – and refused to be drawn on the multiple different reasons she had previously given. 

‘We have not accepted the expansion of Qatar into Australia’s aviation market for the national interest,’ she said in Perth.

‘I don’t think it’s helpful for me to pick any one particular factor that I took into consideration in deciding that.’ 

Outgoing Qantas CEO Alan Joyce – who quits the role in November – said he told the government that Qatar’s extra flights would be unnecessary as other airlines were stepping up their operations to meet demand. 

Mr Joyce has previously come under fire for giving the PM’s son Nathan, 23, and girlfriend Jodie Haydon free membership of the prestigious Qantas Chairman’s Lounge.

PM Anthony Albanese has faced outrage after his son Nathan, 23, and girlfriend Jodie Haydon (pictured with the PM and Alan Joyce) were given free membership of the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge.

Virgin Australia CEO Jayne Hrdlicka said there was ‘no understandable reason’ to stop Qatar Airways bringing in more flights to Australia

Mr Joyce revealed at Monday’s Senate select committee hearing into the cost of living that the airline had written to ministers last October asking for Qatar’s expansion to be blocked.

‘We said to the government that capacity was coming back quite rapidly in all of these markets,’ he said.

‘Granting a carrier doubling their traffic rights in the short term would cause distortion.

‘And then when the capacity was already coming back and the short-term needs will go on to be met anyway and that’s proven to be the case.’

Joyce defended the ban and said it was standard practice globally.

He added: ‘Various countries around the world protect the national interest.’

It’s raised questions about why Qatar has been blocked from stepping up its operations when other foreign rivals like  Emirates have been given the green light.

However that airline works as a flight partner with Qantas, sharing aircraft and passengers on the same routes. 

Qatar Airways however partners directly with Virgin Australia, which is Qantas’s main domestic rival in Australia.

Virgin Australia CEO Ms Hrdlicka dismissed the claim that adding more Qatar flights would ‘distort the market’.

‘You need to add seats where the demand exists, and the constraints are in these major capital cities,’ she said.

‘That’s where the seats need to come and that’s what Qatar has applied for.

‘It’s also a bit of a nonsense to say it’s a market distortion when there’s such little capacity that’s recovered.’

She added: ‘Airfares are about 50 per cent higher today than they were pre-Covid.

‘The statistics say two-thirds of the seats that were flying in and out of Australia pre-Covid are back and one-third of those seats are not yet back.

‘If we get those seats back, airfares will be as low as they possibly could be.’