This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

The shadow minister for infrastructure and transport, Anthony Albanese, has criticised maintenance at Sydney airport after a blackout on Friday stranded thousands of passengers.



Albanese, who has a long-running acrimonious relationship with Sydney airport’s chairman, Max Moore-Wilton, made his comments on Sunday, while announcing that Labor will move amendments to the Qantas Sale Act.

“Friday simply isn’t good enough – that thousands of people were stranded around that airport,” he said.

The airport’s domestic terminal 2, which houses Jetstar, Tigerair and Virgin airlines, was blacked out for hours, stopping check-ins and security screening of thousands of passengers.

Albanese said he was unhappy with the airport’s maintenance and said he disagreed with the New South Wales government’s decision to jointly invest $500m with Sydney airport to upgrade roads in the area. The airport is contributing about $300m.

“Sydney airport is, of course, an airport where considerable profits have been made over recent years but … we see today’s announcement of New South Wales taxpayers paying to fix up the roads around Sydney airport so Sydney airport can make more profits,” he said.

“Since Sydney airport was privatised in 2001, we’ve seen a lack of contribution back to the taxpayer.”

Sydney airport has been contacted for comment.

Meanwhile, Labor has reiterated its willingness to drop provisions from the Qantas Sale Act that prevent an individual owning more than a 25% stake and a foreign-owned airline from owning more than 35%. It will move amendments in the Senate to do so. However, the party will not budge on allowing less than 51% of the airline to be Australian-owned.

Albanese said Labor wanted Qantas to remain an Australian majority owned airline that was based in Australia, with the bulk of maintenance carried out here.

“It shows, yet again, just like on the Infrastructure Australia legislation, [that] Labor is prepared to be a constructive player in this parliament. It is about time, though, that the government stopped acting like an opposition itself.

“It is one thing to say no to everything when you’re the opposition. The problem for Tony Abbott and the coalition that he turned into the no-alition is that they say no to everything,” Albanese said.

The government has maintained that allowing more than 49% foreign ownership of Qantas would unshackle it, and that as long as the majority Australian-owned rule remains in place, airlines such as Virgin have an unfair advantage over Qantas. Albanese said Labor’s proposed changes would be enough to level the playing field between the two airlines.

“This is a minor change, yes, but a significant change for Qantas’s operations. When we had a green paper-white paper process, this was the recommendation which came out of it. That was an extensive process that consulted the industry and the sector, and that was well received at the time.

“Had the coalition not been obstructionist, this was a change that would have been put in place way back in 2010.”