Qantas has dismissed suggestions its support for the Indigenous voice referendum was tied to the government’s decision to block extra Qatar Airways flights into Australia, saying the claims advanced by no campaign supporters have “no basis in fact”.
Qantas’s denial, made in a submission to a Senate inquiry, came the same day the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, alleged without evidence at a press conference that the former Qantas boss Alan Joyce had told the government not to alter the wording of the constitutional amendment.
Qantas has been a noted supporter of the voice, painting Yes23 logos on some planes and giving free flights to key campaigners. In a Senate hearing on the decision to deny Qatar Airways permission to fly more planes into Australia, the Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie asked Qantas executives when they had agreed to participate in the yes campaign, and claimed there had been a “quid pro quo”.
The Qantas chair, Richard Goyder, said he had no discussions with any member of the government on the Qatar decision.
In the submission published on Wednesday, under the subheading “quid pro quo”, Qantas again flatly rejected any link between the Qatar decision and the referendum.
“The suggestion that the Government’s decision on the QCAA application may have been related to Qantas’ support for the Voice and the Yes23 campaign has no basis in fact and ignores Qantas’ longstanding commitment to indigenous reconciliation,” the submission stated.
“Qantas has a long history of supporting indigenous reconciliation and constitutional recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people,” it continued, listing milestones including placing the Recognise logo on aircraft in 2014, supporting the voice co-design process in 2017, supporting the Uluru statement in 2019, and publicly urging a yes vote in July 2023.
“We are proud to support both the Yes23 campaign and the Uluru Dialogue and see the referendum as a positive step in closing the gap and for advancing reconciliation in Australia,” the submission continued.
Earlier in the day, Dutton repeatedly mentioned Joyce as he condemned the government’s actions around the referendum, claiming the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, represented “the big end of town” and criticising him for “[hanging] out on the red carpet with Alan Joyce”.
Asked about the effect of a no vote on Australia’s international reputation, Dutton claimed “the prime minister has been warned of this”.
“Did he change the wording? Did he tighten the wording? No, he did none of that, because Alan Joyce and others were telling him not to,” Dutton alleged.
Joyce was not part of the government’s working groups on the referendum, which included esteemed constitutional experts such as Anne Twomey and Kenneth Hayne, and respected Indigenous figures including Noel Pearson and Megan Davis.
Marcus Stewart, a member of the referendum working groups and former co-chair of the First People’s Assembly of Victoria, tweeted: “Is Dutton delusional?”
Qantas also said giving Qatar Airways a second chance in its bid to double its flights to the country would put Australia “out of step” with other jurisdictions.
The airline’s submission said granting the Qatari carrier’s expansion would have been inappropriate, describing the move as having the “potential to permanently distort the market”.
Qantas also said it was the “largest private investor in marketing Australia to the world” while the tourism benefits of doubling the Qatari carrier’s services in Australia had been “overstated”.
“In terms of inbound tourism, Qatar Airways carries a disproportionately high number of outbound Australian-based passengers,” the submission said.
“On that basis, suggestions that granting the QCAA application would have materially advanced the Australian tourism industry’s recovery are overstated.”
McKenzie told ABC on Wednesday she had been told air fares were up due to a lack of competition.
“When the air fares are being kept arbitrarily high because of a lack of competition, Qantas can choose to run on certain flights through the Middle East to Europe with their partner Emirates, instead of Australians being able to access … Qatar direct to the Middle East and on to multiple destinations to Europe,” she said. “That is a dampener on competition.”
Qatar Airways executives told a Senate inquiry last week they were “surprised and shocked” by the decision to “unfairly” reject its proposed Australian expansion.
“Even more surprising was that the government gave us no reason for rejecting our application,” the airline’s senior vice-president of global sales, Matt Raos, told the committee.
The transport minister, Catherine King, has previously said the decision was made in the national interest but has yet to expand further in specific details.
