KAP leader Robbie Katter fighting for all students to be eligible for remote school charter flights

Calling out a “fundamentally flawed and unfair” agreement, Robbie Katter says action is needed to help remote and rural families and students access school charter flights.

Robbie Katter with Normanton resident Derek Lord.

In his role as the air traffic services officer at the remote Normanton Airport and as a parent himself, Derek Lord has seen first-hand young students being turned away from school charter flights.

He said he regularly sees 20-seat planes arriving at the airport with fewer than half the seats occupied.

His two sons, who board at school in Charters Towers, have been turned away from those same flights because they’re not ABSTUDY recipients, he says.

Calling out what he calls a “fundamentally flawed and unfair” agreement, leader of the Katter’s Australian Party Robbie Katter says action is needed to help remote and rural families and students access school charter flights.

Member for Traegar Robbie Katter at the Breakwater at Ross Creek near the Townsville Port. Picture: Evan Morgan

“For remote and rural communities, flights in and out of town are a key connection to the outside world. If a flight is coming into town for one purpose and there are spare seats, it’s nonsensical for the policy to allow the taxpayer funded aircraft to offer the seats to the wider community,” he said.

Mr Katter labelled the current model as “restrictive”, giving access to government-funded flights to only Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students eligible for the ABSTUDY support program, which provides financial assistance to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and apprentices.

He said it was not an “Indigenous problem., but a “remote living problem.”

“When you’ve got families living in the same town, sending their kids to the same school, but being treated differently, that’s wrong,” he said.

“It risks creating division in communities where it doesn’t exist.”

Mr Katter said he wants to see the services made available to any child living remotely, not just those supported by ABSTUDY.

”Kids are being left stranded, rural and remote families are being ignored and taxpayers are being gouged.”

Living in Normanton, Mr Lord said his sons have been left sitting at the airport with their bags packed ready to go – only to be told they weren’t allowed on the plane.

Cairns air charter company Volantair has lost a federal government contract with AbStudy to fly students from the Torres Strait and Cape York to Cairns, severely impacting their business. Volantair managing director Shaun Quigley is frustrated that the Abstudy flight contract has been awarded to international charter company Corporate Travel Management, without any consultation or a tender process involved. Picture: Brendan Radke

“We’d gladly pay for those seats, anything to avoid the six-day ordeal we have to go through with commercial flights to get them home for the holidays when roads were cut off due to flooding,” he said.

Mr Katter said the situation has been made worse by the Government’s decision to hand the contract to a UK-based operator, replacing long-time provider Volantair.

“We had a capable, locally based operator with 20 years’ experience and regional knowledge,” he said.

Mr Katter said he was working to develop solutions to take to the state and federal governments.

The Townsville Bulletin contacted both Services Australia and the Queensland Department of Education, with each department directing the Bulletin to the other for comment.

Originally published as KAP leader Robbie Katter fighting for all students to be eligible for remote school charter flights