By Angus Thompson and David Crowe
A court dispute over the treatment of women remains a key barrier for Qatar Airways in its attempts to add more flights to Australia, after Transport Minister Catherine King confirmed it was a factor despite claiming only weeks ago it was not.
Lawyers for Australian women subjected to invasive searches at Doha’s main airport welcomed the government’s move to reject the additional flights despite a growing political storm over the decision.
Transport Minister Catherine King told a press conference that the invasive searches of the women in October 2020 were a factor in her decision.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
A Senate inquiry will begin work next week on hearings into the decision after the Coalition overcame last-minute attempts by Labor to scale back the inquiry, which wants to hear from Qatar Airways officials as well as executives from Qantas.
While the Coalition is calling for more details about how King made her decision, it is yet to rule on whether it backs Qatar in its request to double its capacity to Australia by adding 28 flights per week to Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.
King told parliament on Thursday that she made the decision to reject the Qatar application on July 10 and told Prime Minister Anthony Albanese before July 18, when the decision was disclosed in answer to a question from the media.
Despite repeated questioning from the Coalition, King did not name the date when she told Albanese and did not name others involved in the decision, but said she had consulted her ministerial colleagues and knew the views of “relevant aviation stakeholders” in the industry.
Coalition transport spokeswoman Bridget McKenzie said parliament was “none the clearer” on how the decision was made, who lobbied the minister and which of her colleagues had any input into the outcome.
King revealed her thinking on the controversy during a press conference on Thursday morning by saying the strip-searching of the women at Doha was one of the factors on her mind, contradicting comments she made to this masthead six weeks ago when she said it was not a factor.
“Certainly, for context, this is the only airline that has had something like that happen, and so I can’t say that I wasn’t aware of it, but certainly it wasn’t the only factor – it was a factor,” King said at a 7am press conference at Canberra Airport.
She then said she had not pointed to the incident as a factor, adding: “What I have said is that’s a fact, that is context that is there.”
Later, she confirmed her decision was made in the context of the incident: “I can’t pretend it doesn’t exist, like, it exists, it’s a context.”
“If you remember, we had multiple ... requests on behalf of the women who had been escorted at gunpoint after a Qatar airlines flight and had then been subject on the tarmac in ambulances to invasive body searches,” she said at an event held to launch a green paper on aviation.
But this masthead reported on July 26 that King said the treatment of the women was not a reason for blocking Qatar having greater access to Australia’s aviation market.
Damian Sturzaker of Marque Lawyers, who is representing the women, said on Thursday it was “pleasing” that the government was looking carefully at the “appropriate qualities” for an airline carrying passengers to Australia.
“Our brave clients were treated very poorly by Qatar Airways and their attempts to resolve their complaints against Qatar Airways have been blocked at every turn,” he said.
King received a letter from the women in June, through Marque Lawyers, telling her Qatar Airways was “not fit to carry passengers” because of the incident in October 2020.
“We were kept hostage at gunpoint and most of us were then examined vaginally without consent. Our human rights were blatantly violated, and yet Qatar Airways has refused to engage with us or offer an apology for how we were treated on that night,” the women wrote.
“When you are considering Qatar Airways’ bid for extra landing rights, we beg you to consider its insensitive and irresponsible treatment of us and its failure to ensure the safety and dignity of its passengers.
“We implore you to instead consider an airline that will uphold human rights, adhere to international travel and human rights conventions, and do all things reasonably necessary to safeguard its passengers.”
King replied to the women on July 10 to tell them of her decision to reject Qatar’s application for more flights.
“Your experience remains in my thoughts, as well as those of my colleagues,” she said in her letter. “The Australian government is not considering additional bilateral air rights with Qatar.”
Regarding the letter, on she told the press conference on Thursday: “Read what you will into that.”
Qatar Airways told a Sydney court earlier this month that the invasive searches of the Australian women were the responsibility of police rather than the airline.
King said the decision to refuse Qatar was made in the national interest, but added that it did not include the commercial interests of Qantas or any other airline, and said it was “absolute nonsense” that competition in Australia’s international aviation market relied solely on Qatar.
“I mean, really, that is an absolute nonsense, and somehow seems to be tied up with people’s anger about Qantas, and I get that, I get why people are angry about Qantas,” she said of the airline.
This week, the Coalition secured the numbers in the Senate to launch an inquiry into the Qatar decision, which Liberal frontbencher James Paterson said would not have been needed if King had provided “honest answers” when asked.
“She’s been asked in the parliament, she’s been asked in the media and still today – weeks on from the scandal first emerging – she has failed to give a simple, clear explanation for why she made the decision ... to refuse this request from Qatar to have extra flights into Australian airports,” he said on Thursday.
“It is an explanation which just frankly defies credibility. None of the explanations she’s given are convincing, none of them are trustworthy. And that’s why we have to have this inquiry to get to the bottom of it.”
With Caroline Schelle
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correction
An earlier version of this story said the searches took place in 2022. They took place in October 2020.