Catherine King’s Qatar block is bizarre, twisted, made up on the spot

Transport Minister Catherine King is now suggesting that her reason for barring Qatar airlines from increasing the number of flights it can make to Australia each week is because of a human rights violation. Invasive searches of women in 2020. But this excuse was denied as the reason not all that long ago. At best she was deceptive then, at worst she’s being deceptive now. Not a great choice.

Liberal frontbencher James Paterson has rightly queried why, if that’s the real reason, isn’t Qatar banned from flying into Australia altogether? And what about other airlines from countries with human rights violations? Why aren’t we also restricting their flights, or banning them altogether?

The inconsistency of the government’s logic here is bizarre, twisted and being made up on the run. At the heart of the matter is whether it barred Qatar from increasing its number of flights into the country simply to help Qantas out. That hasn’t been categorically denied – weasel words wins out whenever the opposition presses the matter.

Defending Qantas might have been tolerable in times past, but not right now. The stench of the connection is something Labor wants to avoid, especially after all the questions being asked about the PMs links to the airline and its outgoing CEO.

But apparently Anthony Albanese didn’t even know that King made the Qatar decision until after it was made. That would seem odd, but that’s the line now being run.

This whole sorry saga is playing out in an environment of rising international airfares because of limited flights being available. Good reason to have allowed the uptick in Qatar flights you would have thought. I’m the name of competition if nothing else. The airline has been voted the world’s best on numerous occasions.

Labor assumed it was appealing to populism by not allowing the extra flights, because of the 2020 incident. Virtue signalling, inconsistently delivered in one isolated case. But self-interest has seen the decision condemned, as most want sky high ticket prices to come down.

The most laughable part of this situation has been watching a conga line of ministers, including the PM, try and claim Qatar can actually increase its number of flights under current rules, to places like Adelaide and Canberra. What a joke. That isn’t economically viable for the airline, and besides, if it can increase flights into those destinations then how exactly does that fit with the moral decision made to ban it from increasing flights to other destinations? Simply put, it doesn’t.

Peter van Onselen is a professor of politics and public policy at the University of Western Australia and Griffith University.