King contradicts herself over Qatar flights, now says strip-searches a ‘factor’

Transport Minister Catherine King has contradicted comments she made six weeks ago, when she denied the strip-searching of a group of Australian women at Doha Airport weighed into her decision to reject Qatar Airways’ bid to double its Australian flights.

King told a press conference on Thursday morning that the invasive searches of the women in October 2022 were a factor in her decision, before denying that she had pointed to it as a factor, then eventually admitting that the decision was made in the “context” of the fallout over the pandemic-era incident.

Transport Minister Catherine King told a press conference that the invasive searches of the women in October 2022 were a factor in her decision.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“Certainly, for context, this is the only airline that has had something like that happen, and so I can’t say that I wasn’t aware of it, but certainly it wasn’t the only factor – it was a factor,” King said at a 7am press conference at Canberra Airport.

Under repeated questioning, she then said she had not pointed to the incident as a factor, adding: “What I have said is that’s a fact, that is context that is there.” Later, she confirmed her decision was made in the context of the incident.

“If you remember, we had multiple … requests on behalf of the women who had been escorted at gunpoint after a Qatar airlines flight and had then been subject on the tarmac in ambulances to invasive body searches,” she said at an event held to launch a green paper on aviation.

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She said she had received a letter from the women’s lawyers detailing their experiences, “which are, pretty frankly, not anything we would expect anyone, and certainly not Australians travelling on an international airline, to experience”.

She signed a letter to the women informing them of her decision to reject Qatar’s application in July on the same day the decision was made, as revealed by the ABC on Wednesday.

“Read what you will into that,” she said.