More like it benefits Qantas and the government is willing to turn a blind eye to the arostricies committee there - remember Jamal Khashoggi? The problem is once you start including moral arguments where do you stop? Should Turkey be flying here due to what they do to the Kurds or China to the Uyghur or buddhists? So moral grandstanding doesn’t cut it.
The perception that the government and Qantas can’t shake is that they are in cahoots. Not providing additional slots to Qatar provides additional benefits to Qantas/Emirates in the short term. Turkish Airlines can’t ramp up for a good 2 to 5 years, but Qatar can.
The only one that looses is the Australian consumer. Albenese was the previous transport minister so has a close established relationship with Qantas. He decided not to pursue an EU261 scheme.
Jamal Khashoggi was a Saudi national killed by Saudi Arabia. What the hell does it have to do with this?
The point is that bilateral air services agreements are part of the global international trade and investment architecture. They don't exist in isolation of this and the broader diplomatic arrangements between countries. Countries can rarely achieve consensus on isolated issues in trade and investment negotiations, and concessions in one area are traded for concessions in other areas. Countries that treat each other with respect will generally have opportunities to find consensus across a broader range of issues. For example, Australia & NZ had an incredibly restrictive bilateral for generations, but it took a much larger free trade agreement to change the bilateral, not even to an open skies, but a single market.
In this context, countries will trade away significant concessions for bigger goals. What has Qatar offered Australia in return? Australia expanded Qatar's access in early 2022, and then within a year they came back asking for more without offering much (if anything) in return. For not getting what they wanted they tried to bully the government. It doesn't seem like a winning strategy.
Yet, while Qatar has a restrictive arrangement, the UAE got a good one. Ironically, the impetus behind it wasn't Qantas-Emirates, but Virgin-Etihad! Virgin and Etihad entered into a joint venture in 2011, more than 2 years before the Qantas-Emirates joint venture!
Yet, China also got open skies. India got open skies. Singapore got near open skies. US got open skies. These all form part of much larger, broader and more important trade and investment relationships.
At the same time, I agree, blocking additional access to Qatar will cost Australian consumers in the short run, although far less than many have suggested. In the last few months, Singapore Airlines has quietly added more capacity than Qatar would have brought. There is no counterfactual, we simply do not know if they would have added this capacity if Qatar had brought it instead. We don't know, but people argue it as fact.
And yes, there are many countries with poor track records on human rights. But if you simply give them everything they want, you have no leverage. Alternatively, imagine in any other area of trade we simple gave countries market access with nothing in return? This would be absurd.
And I don't care which Govt we are talking about as Qantas didn't differentiate its actions.
unlimited oil funds 
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