Senator Eric Abetz

SENATOR ABETZ: Evidence at the Qantas hearing by the Senate Committee today has exposed that the Government did not take action when it could've taken action. The evidence of Qantas has been very clear. The Government did not ask for a delay in Qantas' proposed actions. The Government did not ask for more time to consider its position. The Government simply sat on its hands and accepted that which Qantas had to offer. Further, Qantas evidence is very clear – if the Government would have acted, pursuant to section 431 of the Fair Work Act and intervened in an appropriate manner, the grounding of the fleet and the inconvenience that tens of thousands of Australians and overseas travellers could have been avoided. So the questions for Ms Gillard and Senator Evans are: Why didn't you intervene? Why didn't you even ask on the phone call when Qantas were telling you about the action for a bit more time? Why didn't you ask for a bit more time? Why didn't you seek to intervene on behalf of the tens of thousands of Australians that were going to be inconvenienced by this lock out and subsequent grounding? They're the questions that need to be answered.

It is also disturbing that the Labor Senators and Senator Bob Brown have been seeking to conduct a witch hunt and every conspiracy theory they put to the committee today has been debunked well and truly by Mr Joyce. They have used inflammatory language but of course have remained silent when on the other side of the ledger the unions have been talking about 'baking Qantas slowly', seeking a 'consumer boycott' of Qantas which of course would have had serious ramifications not only to the travelling public but also on Qantas' ongoing viability. So mismanagement and incompetence by Ms Gillard and Senator Evans and Mr Albanese, for that matter, are the highlights of this morning's evidence.

QUESTION: Senator Cameron suggested that Qantas itself could have put in use section 424 of the Fair Work Act and got the same result. Do you agree with that?

SENATOR ABETZ: These are all hypotheticals and no matter how Senator Cameron likes to use inflammatory language, the simple fact is the Government could have and should have acted. Why didn't they ask for extra time? Why didn't the Government ask; if you're going to embark on this course of action at 8pm on Monday, why not give us a few extra hours now to see if we can sort something? And no matter the amount of spin Senator Cameron tries to introduce to the debate, the Government cannot overcome that threshold issue.

QUESTION: Have Qantas managed to clear a few things up today?

SENATOR ABETZ: The Senate Inquiry, I must say, cleared up a lot of things for me. I had a lot of questions and concerns about Qantas and the three Qantas representatives today put themselves in a light that put the Labor Party and the Australian Greens back in their box. They used very extreme, inflammatory language to the representatives and the representatives at all times mastered the situation in a manner that if Senator Brown and Senator Cameron and others were decent they would have in fact been apologising for the inflammatory language used.