Senator Eric Abetz

Lyndal Curtis: Senator Abetz welcome to News 24. When did you know of the Qantas plans to lock out its workforce and ground its entire fleet?

Senator Abetz: I thought you might ask that question, so I’ve checked with my staff and it was at 4:24 on Saturday afternoon.

Lyndal Curtis: Did you have any indication, any inkling before hand in the days leading up to this, that a wholesale grounding of the fleet and a lock out of staff was possible?

Senator Abetz: It was obvious that this dispute was escalating and that is why myself, two Liberal Premiers and others, were calling on the Government to intervene in this dispute because it was coming to a head. If the Government would have intervened we would not have had the grounding of the fleet and more importantly the huge inconvenience to tens of thousands of Australians and indeed overseas passengers.

Lyndal Curtis: Isn’t it the case though that when Qantas took its decision on Saturday the Licensed Aircraft Engineers had called off their stop work and they were in fact working on planes, the TWU had called off a stop work meeting and the pilots weren’t striking, they were just wearing different coloured ties and making announcements?

Senator Abetz: What was happening was a clever, but devious, strategy by the trade union leadership. What they were saying was “we’re going to call a strike on such and such a day”. Qantas had to therefore plan, make alternative arrangements and then just before the strike was to occur, the unions called off the strike.

So causing all the damage that a strike does without actually having a strike and this was happening on a rolling basis and Qantas decided that, given that, it had to come to a head and therefore they took the action that they did.

Lyndal Curtis: Do you think that was the right action by Qantas?

Senator Abetz: What I believe was the right action of Qantas was to give the Government a good three hours notice of what they were intending to do and reading between the lines it seems to me this was basically a plea for help from Qantas.

Lyndal Curtis: if its getting to that stage and you want to make a plea for help, don’t you make this explicit?

Senator Abetz: I would have thought, with all the ex trade union officials lining the Labor party front bench that they would have been able to determine the consequences of what Qantas said they were going to do when they got the phone call at about 2 o’clock on Saturday afternoon. If I would have been the Minister, surely you would have said to Alan Joyce and Qantas hold off for an hour or two please, we will see what we can do to stop you grounding the airline. And if action would have been taken under section 431 of the Act, the Minister could have signed the appropriate document and stopped the industrial action and terminated it and the planes would still be flying.

Lyndal Curtis: But was the test for section 431, was the test met if the grounding hadn’t gone ahead yet?

Senator Abetz: Yes, because in the legislation it does accept the possibility of threatened damage to the Australian economy and there is no doubt that the grounding was determined to be damaging to the Australian economy. Therefore the threat of that happening would have been threatening the Australian economy for the necessary threshold of section 431.

Lyndal Curtis: But this could have been legally challenged, isn’t it also the case that if the Government had used this section then one of the parties could have applied for an injunction on the Government’s move and the grounding would have gone ahead anyway?

Senator Abetz: Oh look these are all hypotheticals that we’re getting into. We know that, having used section 424 instead, which was also a new section untried before in the Fair Work Act, that the unions are now actively considering whether or not they are going to appeal that decision. So the Government had to take decisive action, but can I say even before Saturday Ministerial intervention, without using any legislative provisions, that putting pressure on the parties to genuinely negotiate, I would have thought was the proper way to go. And Martin Ferguson, surprisingly as minister for tourism, saw this need, called for it about a fortnight ago and Ms Gillard and Senator Evans seemed to have ignored his plea.

Lyndal Curtis: Isn’t the reality though, Qantas took the action, the Government intervened, the planes were back in the air less than 48 hours later and both parties have to negotiate now and come to an agreement or a decision will be made for them.

Senator Abetz: The Government deserves no credit for cleaning up a mess that they could have avoided creating in the first place. Sure the planes are flying again; people are slowly getting back to the routine of things, that’s all good but it need not have happened and that is the point that we as a Coalition make. We were, through two Premiers of NSW and Victoria suggesting intervention, myself on Meet the Press earlier and elsewhere. It was coming to a stage that intervention was needed and sought. Instead when Qantas told them, it seems that only then did they decide what they may or may not do and waited until the fleet was grounded before taking action.

Lyndal Curtis:  Senator Abetz thank you very much for your time.