‘Con Air’ - Minister accepts Lifetime Platinum Status from QANTAS ✈️

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1:02News you can trust. Opinions that matter. Now, Ben Fordham comments. Wow, wow, wow, look up tone deaf in the dictionary this morning and you may just see this. The federal transport minister Catherine King has just accepted a jumbo-sized gift from Quantas. She's been given lifetime platinum status. Now, if you've never heard of it, that's probably because it's extremely rare. This is not the Quantas Club. It's not the Chairman's Lounge. It's lifetime platinum status. Happy to see tears that never closed down. The benefit gives people full access to first and business class Quantas lounges for life. It gives them priority upgrades and support from the airline's VIP services team and all future status credits earn a 100% bonus. As the name suggests, you've got it for life. Lifetime platinum status. If you're not the transport minister, you have to spend about a million

2:07dollars to earn it. And Catherine King got it for nothing. Completely free. This is the same Catherine King who handed Quantas a massive favor a few years ago. Their rival Qatar wanted to expand into Australia, offering more flights and greater competition on airfares. It would have been a win for the average passenger. But Catherine King rejected the request after solid lobbying from the former Quantas boss Alan Joyce. Under pressure to explain herself, the transport minister then offered eight different reasons for blocking more competition. First, it was because of a class action lawsuit involving Aussie women against Qatar airways. Then she claimed it was about reducing emissions, claiming she wanted to decarbonise the transport sector. Next, Catherine King told journalists the Qatari request would go against Australia's national interest. After that, she claimed Qatar's expansion could hurt the aviation sector and the post-COVID recovery. Then she claimed she wanted to protect jobs. And the next excuse had

3:10something to do with the airline being owned by the Qatari government. And the one after that suggested the Quantas's investment in aircraft was the reason it was embarrassing. She had more excuses than frequent flyer points. So after all of that, what would any sensible transport minister do when offered lifetime platinum status? They'd knock it back, right? Or at least say, look, this won't be appropriate to accept such a gift while I'm acting as transport minister. But that's not the way Catherine King responded. She said, thanks very much. Mark Dastofano reports in the Australian financial review, the federal labour government has spent two terms facing full frontal scrutiny over whether it's most senior MPs are too close to Quantas. The federal transport minister, Catherine King, dropped a stink bomb in her register of interests on Monday afternoon. It's another curious decision by labour ministers who seem to lose all their senses when Quantas comes knocking bearing freebies. King is the federal transport minister who blocked Qatar airways launching 28 new international flights a week back in 2023. The decision led

4:16to Catherine King being labelled as the Minister for Quantas. She's hardly alone in this regard, reports the Australian financial review. Her current boss, Anthony Albanese, spent his brief tenure as transport minister, asking for upgrades from Alan Joyce. Those revelations were aired in the financial review by Joe Aston with the Prime Minister denying it. They say, but that was then now is now what was Catherine King thinking? And it's a fair question. Catherine King's office is claiming she earned the lifetime platinum status fair and square. She must have been doing a lot of flying in and out of her hometown of Ballarat. To reach the lifetime platinum tier, you have to earn 75,000 status credits. Now Sydney to London first class earns you only 420. So you'd have to take more than 150 long haul flights in first class to reach the milestone. Regardless of how she's become eligible, wouldn't you be asking yourself, is this a good look as transport minister? Of course it's not, but the Minister for Quantas just couldn't say no.

5:21By the way, the finance department once looked into whether MP staffers and public servants should be excluded from earning the credits on flights because they're paid for by taxpayers, they looked into it and they decided to keep them anyway. Fair income. Enjoy your flight, Minister. Hi, this is Dave Roberts. Heading into summer without a medical emergency kit, that's a risk. Summer colds can linger and getting sick on vacation can derail everything. That's why everyone needs a medical emergency kit. It includes doctor prescribed medications to treat common and serious illnesses. So if you wake up sick, at home or on the road, you already have what you need. It's like having an urgent care and pharmacy at home. Say $45 with code blue at urgentcare kit.com slash blue urgent care kit.com slash blue.