Australian women suing Qatar Airways after a “horrific” experience at Doha airport have criticised a Senate report into the airline’s blocked push for extra flights, claiming the investigation focused too much on Alan Joyce and Qantas, without holding the Qatari carrier to account.
On Monday the Senate select committee on bilateral air service agreements – set up to examine the rejection of Qatar Airways’ request to almost double its flights into Australia’s major airports – released its report, urging the Albanese government to immediately review its decision.
Through a month of hearings the inquiry examined questions about Qantas’s influence on the transport minister Catherine King’s decision – including grilling the airline’s new boss, Vanessa Hudson, and threatening her predecessor Joyce with jail if he failed to appear at a later date after his return from overseas – as well as broader accusations of anti-competitive behaviour and high airfares.
The inquiry also canvassed the significance of an October 2020 episode at Doha airport, when female passengers were forced from planes at gunpoint and subjected to non-consensual invasive bodily inspections as authorities searched for the mother of a baby abandoned in a bathroom.
Five Australian women are taking legal action against Qatar Airways, its subsidiary that owns Doha airport and the Qatar Civil Aviation Authority. Marque Lawyers, the firm representing the women, have complained of a lack of cooperation from the Qatari parties and criticised their failure to directly apologise to the women.
King revealed her intention to block the airline’s request for more routes in July, when responding to a letter that the women had sent her pleading not to grant the carrier extra rights. In the months of controversy that followed, she stressed their treatment was only one factor that provided context to the decision, amid a range of “national interest” considerations.
Qatar Airways representatives told the inquiry such treatment would not be repeated and in the committee’s report on Monday the recommendations focused on reviewing the decision and better considering consumers, as well as noting that Qatar Airways had helped repatriate Australians during the pandemic and from Afghanistan in 2021.
The inquiry, led by the Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie, became politically charged, with King refusing to appear. Labor and Greens members issued dissenting reports, with the government labelling the Senate report a “political stunt”.
Now the women behind the legal action have criticised the report for failing to hold Qatar Airways to account for its handling “of the horrific incident”. The women have backed Labor’s dissenting report, saying: “Qatar Airways is not a good corporate citizen and is not entitled to improved landing rights.”
Anna*, one of the women behind the legal action, told Guardian Australia that their case had not gained fair attention until it was linked to the government’s decision to knock back Qatar Airways’ request.
“It has just turned into a political storm about Alan Joyce and Qantas and it has been very upsetting for me and the whole group,” she said.
“We’ve never received an apology from the airport or the government, they’ve never reached out to us. There was a public apology issued once, but that’s it.”
At a court hearing in August, lawyers for the airline argued that the searches were actions of police, not of airline or airport staff. Meanwhile, the Qatari regulator was seeking a stay on the basis of sovereign immunity.
Anna said the airline was “aggressively defending” the legal proceedings.
“We were very happy when Minister King refused them extra rights, when she says the national interest, we understood this as she stood by us. The national interest is the citizens of this country … what other interest could they have?”
“We were extremely disappointed to read the [Senate] report. It was very hard to read, there was no proper mention of what they did to us.”
Framing the rejection of the airline’s push for more flights as supporting Qantas and making airfares higher as a result had left them feeling “without support”.
“I am someone who has to travel overseas to see my family, I would like cheaper flights too, I understand this,” Anna said. “But Qatar needs to answer us, and our government is the one who can force them to answer.”
Marque’s Damian Sturzaker, who representing the women, said the political nature of the Senate inquiry and the focus on Qantas “certainly minimised” the women’s ordeal, paying only “lip service” to their plight.
“There was criticism of Alan Joyce not appearing, and yet the CEO of Qatar Airways didn’t appear,” he said.
“A good corporate citizen recognises when a mistake has been made and ensures that the people affected by that mistake are compensated and given an apology. Qatar has done neither of these things,” Sturzaker said.
McKenzie acknowledged the women’s criticism, but defended the committee’s report and inquiry, saying it had “expressed its deep concern at the appalling and unacceptable incident”.
She said government officials “informed the committee that the Qatari Government had prosecuted those responsible, had apologised and ‘repeatedly assured’ such an appalling incident would not happen again”.
*Anna is a pseudonym to protect the woman’s identity
