HOST: Prime Minister Julia Gillard is in Canberra. Prime Minister, good morning to you. Now, despite the overnight ruling from Fair Work Australia there has been a lot of criticism of your Government for not intervening sooner. Why didn't you act earlier?
PM: Thanks for the question Kochie, and it gives me an opportunity to explain some of the circumstances of this dispute, which I don't think have been clearly understood.
Kochie, the circumstances here are that on Friday Qantas was reassuring that it could make progress in negotiations. On Saturday, around 2pm, Alan Joyce contacted the Minister for Transport, Antony Albanese, and said he would be grounding the planes at 5pm.
There has been discussion about us using Section 431 of the Fair Work Act and the Minister issuing a notice to terminate industrial action. That section has never been used in Australia's history and if we had tried to use it, we would have ended up in a world of legal uncertainty, with the prospect of court action and uncertainty continuing for Qantas, its staff and people who rely on it to get around Australia and around the world.
So what we did instead was make application to Fair Work Australia to end the industrial action and that application has succeeded. That's a win for people who need to get where they need to go - that is, the travelling public. It's a win for the travelling public and it's a win for the million Australians who work in tourism.
HOST: Prime Minister, newspapers this morning claim Alan Joyce tried to phone you on Saturday, but you didn't return his call. Should you have phoned him back?
PM: Qantas has contacted my office this morning and said those reports are misleading. Mr Joyce, at some point today, will make a clarifying statement about those reports, but those reports basically take us back to the same point, the point about Section 431 of the legislation - should the Government have used it? Well Kochie, the problem with the Government using that section is it's never been used before in Australia's legal history and would have put us in a world of legal uncertainty, with all of the consequences that could have had for causing Qantas to not know what's happening, workers to not know what's happening and passengers to not know what's happening, as courts work their way through. Instead, we went to the industrial umpire and we have succeeded in the application we took.
HOST: OK, and you're saying Alan Joyce didn't try and call you directly. He'd been in contact with Anthony Albanese, one of your ministers, constantly all along and he will clear that up a little later this morning.
Now, Qantas and unions have 21 days to negotiate now. What happens if they don't reach an agreement?
PM: Our industrial umpire, Fair Work Australia, can then make a determination to end the dispute. That is, they effectively arbitrate the matter and impose a solution on Qantas and the unions. It would, of course, be far better for Qantas and the unions to use this 21-day period to sort it out themselves.
HOST: OK, at the end of 21 days, if they haven't sorted it out, though, under our industrial relations laws the umpire's decision stands, everyone's got to accept it?
PM: Absolutely.
HOST: OK. Unions are worried this decision sets a precedent for business to quash strikes. Do you share those concerns, or is, you know, everyone just has to abide by the system?
PM: Everyone has to abide by the system and the order that's been made by Fair Work Australia stops everyone's industrial action - the unions are not able to take industrial action and Qantas is not able to continue its lock out.
But Kochie, I do want to say I believe that Qantas took an extreme approach on Saturday. On Friday it was saying that there were prospects for negotiating this dispute. On Saturday, with very little notice to Government or passengers, it grounded planes. It did that in circumstances where it had other options open to it. It could have take exactly the same application that the Government did and have industrial action terminated by the industrial umpire.
HOST: Do you feel as though you've been blackmailed by Qantas?
PM: I've done what I needed to do to get this dispute brought to an end, to get planes back into the sky, and it's now up to Qantas and the employees of Qantas and the unions to get round a table and sort this dispute out, but I am making the point, Kochie, that Qantas had other options available to it on Saturday than grounding planes without any effective notice to passengers on Melbourne Cup weekend.
HOST: OK, sounds like they're in your bad books. We'll wait and see how that pans out. Prime Minister, thanks for joining us.
PM: It's a question of the grand inconvenience for passengers and the impact for the national economy that's concerning me.
HOST: OK, alright Prime Minister, we'll have to leave it there. Thank you again for your time this morning.