King says decision to block Qatar flights wasn’t to protect Qantas

afr.com:

Transport Minister Catherine King says her decision to block Qatar Airways expanding its services into Australia’s four biggest airports was not to protect Qantas, despite earlier claims she had done so to save local aviation jobs and to assist the national carrier’s recovery from the pandemic.

Ms King told The Australian Financial Review Infrastructure Summit she “very clearly did not take the commercial interests of either Qantas or Virgin into consideration when I was making that decision”.

Transport Minister Catherine King says the decision to block more flights from Qatar was in the national interest. Michael Quelch

On Tuesday, Ms King suggested the decision was made to ensure that Australia has the capacity to rescue citizens in times of strife, even though Qatar Airways worked alongside Qantas and delivered the first rescue mission from Tel Aviv to Sydney last month.

“Do we as a nation need to make sure we have in times of emergency, we’ve had to use that recently, with evacuating people out of both Israel and out of Gaza,” Ms King asked in explaining the national interest.

“What do we need as a nation to be able to hold on to what is happening in terms of competition overall? They are some of the things I took into consideration when we were asked for basically an unprecedented amount of access by Qatar Airways into our aviation market.”

The “unprecedented amount of access” described by Ms King would have left Qatar Airways with 28 flights a week into Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. Its rivals, Qantas’ partner Emirates and Etihad Airways, have the right to fly 168 flights a week, but have been using only half of their rights.

The lower levels of use have led to record high airfares and a much more muted