Labor’s nonsensical Qatar reasoning can barely get off the tarmac

Of all the issues to squander political capital, protecting Qantas’ quasi-monopoly on its European route probably shouldn’t have been on the top of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s list.

Despite protests from various Labor premiers, Labor elder Wayne Swan, the entire tourism sector (led by Flight Centre CEO Graham Turner) and several cabinet members, the federal government remains steadfast in its blockade of Qatar’s bid to run 28 additional weekly flights to Australia.

Transport Minister Catherine King, Albanese and even the bumbling Assistant Treasurer Stephen Jones have all had a go. The justifications have become so outlandish that ministers are now cycling through the same old excuses.

The government’s desperation peaked last week as Qantas was being charged with misleading and deceptive conduct by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). Jones claimed that Qatar’s bid was blocked because allowing the extra flights would be “unsustainable for the existing Australian-based carrier”.

This was the exact same carrier that a day earlier had announced a record $2.47 billion profit, mostly paid for by Australian travellers forking out record airfares. Jones quickly backtracked after the opposition accused the government of running a “protection racket” for Qantas. (Before entering Parliament, Jones was a union leader; maybe he’s had somewhat of an epiphany since being granted access to the Chairman’s Lounge.)

King, after realising it wasn’t politically astute to protect a company in the process of facing Australia’s biggest consumer fine, has gone back to excuse No. 1. Yesterday she claimed an incident involving invasive body searches of Australian women in 2020 at Doha Airport provided “context” for the decision to block Qatar Airways’ application.

King told media that Qatar Airways was the “only airline that has something like that where that has happened”, and that the incident at Doha Airport was “frankly not anything we would expect anyone, and certainly not Australians travelling on an international airline, to experience”.

The situation at Doha Airport in 2020 — which involved a newborn abandoned in a toilet and the resulting ham-fisted, appalling body searches — was undeniably horrific, but King appears to fail to understand the difference between the actions of a small number of armed guards — who Qatar claims worked for police not the airline — and a totally separate airline that employs 45,000 civilians.

If Australian police or customs officers conducted searches of Qantas or Virgin passengers, we would rightfully question the actions of the officers, not the airline they happened to be flying on.

So either King is unquestionably stupid, or she realises this and is equating the actions of the Qatar authorities with Qatar Airways because the airline is owned by the Qatari government and she is effectively meting out a sort of vigilante commercial justice.

If this is the case, then she has utterly lost the plot. For a start, if Qatar Airways’ actions were so abhorrent, why did King not stop the airline from flying to Australia when she was appointed transport minister? Moreover, since 2020, Qatar is also the largest shareholder in British Airways. Will King also prevent BA from seeking additional routes to Australia? How wide should this ethics-based approach to bilateral air negotiations extend?

In 2019, Yang Hengjun, an Australian citizen and democracy activist, was detained during a visit to see family in China, and was later charged with espionage — he fears dying in a Chinese jail. In 2020, Cam Gillespie, an Australian man, was sentenced to death in China for drug smuggling. Journalist Cheng Lei has been imprisoned in China since August 2020 and hasn’t seen her children since. These issues have (correctly) not stopped King from allowing Chinese carriers to significantly ramp up flights to Australia in recent months.

King is essentially applying a unilateral sanctions regime against a foreign nation based on a two-page letter she received from five Australians who are justifiably seeking financial compensation. The victims of King’s foray into foreign affairs are ordinary Australians just trying to visit family and friends in Europe or the Middle East who are being forced to pay thousands of dollars to fund Alan Joyce’s golden handshake.

Labor has been relentlessly attacked for the decision because the Coalition (which also spent decades doing Qantas’ bidding) is well aware that the only reason Qatar’s flights were blocked was that it financially helped Qantas. Trying to backfill nonsensical excuses keeps the issue alive and continues to exacerbate the stench of soft corruption that permeates government.