Australian bureaucrats will schedule a meeting with Qatari officials to discuss the Albanese government’s controversial decision to reject Qatar Airways’ request to almost double its flight operations to Australia.
Senate inquiry hearings this week revealed that the Qatar Civil Aviation Authority (QCAA) – which lodged the request for an additional 28 weekly flights to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth – had requested consultations with the Australian Department of Infrastructure and Transport.
The QCAA said that on 16 August it “officially requested consultations … to better understand the reasons for their decision and to work together with the Department [of Infrastructure and Transport] to build a road map for future enhancements of traffic rights”.
“We sincerely hope that the department will agree to schedule consultations as a matter of urgency and priority,” the QCAA said in a submission.
The Qatari regulator had claimed that “no other carrier in the [Gulf Cooperation Council] region is subject to such strict conditions and requirements regarding fair competition in Australia”.
On Wednesday, at a hearing of the Senate select committee on bilateral air service agreements – set up to examine the rejection of the Qatari request – executives from Qatar Airways said the QCAA was still waiting for the department to schedule such consultations.
A Department of Infrastructure and Transport spokesperson told Guardian Australia it had received the QCAA’s request, and that “consultations are provided for under our current air services arrangements”.
“The department has notified Qatar that it is considering the request and will contact the Qatar CAA seeking to arrange a meeting at a mutually convenient time,” the department said.
It is expected the department will contact the QCAA before 25 October to arrange the meeting, in line with provisions under the current air services agreement.
The QCAA and Qatar Airways are hoping the meeting will shed light on the reasons why its request for extra services were rejected.
“We were surprised and shocked by the decision of the Australian government to reject our application for additional flights to Australia. Even more surprising was that the government gave us no reason for rejecting our application,” Qatar Airways’ senior vice-president of global sales, Matt Raos, said at a Senate hearing in Canberra on Wednesday.
Qatar Airways’ senior vice-president of aeropolitical and corporate affairs, Fathi Atti, told the inquiry he believed the application for extra flights had “been unfairly rejected”.
The Virgin CEO, Jayne Hrdlicka, told the Senate inquiry she found out about the Australian government’s decision to block its partner airline Qatar Airways from expanding flights to Australia through the media, adding the ruling lacked any “coherent logic” and was contrary to the national interest.
Hrdlicka also told the committee that the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, did not reveal the decision to her during their discussion on 13 July – three days after the transport minister, Catherine King, had made the decision.
During hearings on Wednesday, the Qantas chief executive, Vanessa Hudson, claimed it was “an important part of democracy” that the details of a plea Qantas sent the government in 2022 to block extra air rights for Qatar Airways be kept private.
Hudson also reiterated claims made by her predecessor, Alan Joyce, that Qatar Airways’ expansion would distort the aviation market when it was initially requested in October 2022.
However, Hudson – who opened her appearance by repeating a public apology – repeatedly dodged questions asking if Qantas’s position had changed given the considerable recovery the aviation market has since made. She also insisted Qantas’s opposition was not rooted in a desire to benefit its own finances.
“[In October 2022] the international market had not yet recovered from Covid and our submission pointed to that, awarding a 200% increase in traffic rights to Qatar when the market hadn’t even returned to 100%. We felt that it was important that the market returned to 100% before we structurally changed,” Hudson said.
Hudson and Qantas’s general counsel, Andrew Finch, gave permission for the submission which the airline prepared in October 2022 to be provided to the committee in redacted form, provided it was not made publicly available.
Finch said this was due to a “desire to ensure that corporates and individuals feel comfortable when they make submissions to the government on matters of these things and particularly when they’re invited to do so that their submissions are kept confidential”.
Asked by Senator Simon Birmingham if it would make a version of the submission public, Hudson backed Finch’s reasoning for not wanting the submission made public, saying “we think that that’s an important part of democracy”.
Meanwhile, the embattled Qantas board chairman, Richard Goyder, trashed calls to step down from his position over the reputational damage caused by multiple crises that felled the former CEO Alan Joyce.
Goyder told the committee: “[Major shareholders] are very strongly supportive of me staying and I would also argue that my history in business has been one of high ethics, looking to create value for all our stakeholders.
“I’ve navigated a company through the global financial crisis, chaired Qantas through the most existential crisis we’ve ever had as an airline. And right now, the major shareholders and the board feel that I’m the best person to chair the board to navigate us through the current situation.”
Additional reporting by Sarah Basford Canales
