Aviation Consumer Protection Bill 2026, Aviation Consumer Protection (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2026, Aviation Consumer Protection Levy Bill 2026, Aviation Consumer Protection Levy (Collection) Bill 2026

Mr NG (Menzies) (15:56): I rise to speak on the aviation consumer protection bills before the house today, the Aviation Consumer Protection Bill 2026, the Aviation Consumer Protection Levy Bill 2026, the Aviation Consumer Protection Levy (Collection) Bill 2026 and the Aviation Consumer Protection (Consequential Amendments and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2026.

These bills matter because air travel is no longer a luxury for many Australians. It is part of everyday life. These bills matter because the aviation industry holds a special place in my heart.

My dad has worked in the aviation industry for almost his entire working life. He migrated to Australia from Singapore, which is where he got his qualification. He was conscripted into the air force and learned his trade there, studied in London and then came to Australia in his mid-20s, where he became qualified as a LAME, a licensed aircraft maintenance engineer.

He worked first for Ansett and then for Virgin Australia. He started work, as I said, in his mid-20s in Australia. He's now in his mid-70s, and he theoretically retired this year.

That means that, last week, he only took four casual shifts because he can't help himself. Families in my electorate of Menzies and people like my dad and my wife travel to see loved ones across Australia and across the world. This is an electorate where almost 45 per cent of residents were born overseas.

In communities across Box Hill, Doncaster, Blackburn, Templestowe, Mont Albert, Warrandyte and Park Orchards, international travel is not an occasional luxury. It is how families stay connected across generations and continents. People travel to visit parents and grandparents overseas.

Workers travel to keep businesses and industries running. Students travel for university placements, study opportunities and new careers. In an electorate as culturally diverse as Menzies, where the largest overseas-born communities include people with heritage from China, Malaysia, India, Hong Kong, Iran, Italy and Greece, aviation is deeply connected to family, culture and community life.

That means that when the aviation system fails, the consequences are very real for people. Families lose money, workers miss shifts, businesses lose incomes, parents are stranded with children at the airport, people miss weddings and graduations and time with loved ones that many will never get back. Australians understand, of course, that the weather can upset plans, and they understand that aircraft can be subject to technical faults, that this can cause delays and that safety must always come first.

What everyday Australians don't understand is why so much of the burden of these foreseeable issues has had to fall on them—when flights are cancelled without clear communication, when refunds take months, when people spend hours on hold trying to speak to someone to resolve their issues, when they're stranded in an unfamiliar city and need to reach into their own pockets, when responsibility gets pushed from one place to another.

People expect accountability and they expect a reasonable level of service and support, and that is why these bills matter. Over the last several years, Australians have seen significant disruption across the aviation sector: delayed flights, cancelled services, lost baggage, reduced regional reliability and poor customer communication. And, while many airline workers have done their absolute best under pressure, too many consumers have felt powerless when things go wrong.

Most people are not asking for any special treatment. They just want basic fairness. If a flight is cancelled, they want timely information.

If they are entitled to compensation or support, they want to know how to access it. If they lodge a complaint, they want someone independent to hear it. That is not unreasonable.

It is a minimum standard people expect when they pay for a service. And yet for too long many Australians have felt that they have nowhere to turn. That has been especially difficult for regional communities.

We're a big country and we often face the tyranny of distance, and so we are perhaps more reliant on airlines than many other countries. In many parts of Australia, aviation links are essential for work, tourism, business and family life. Delays and cancellations do not just create inconvenience; they create financial and emotional stress that flows through entire households.

For someone travelling for specialist medical treatment, for example, a cancelled flight is not just a matter of frustration; it can be a matter of life and death. For a small-business owner, missing a client meeting interstate is not just annoying; it has real impacts on their bottom line. For parents travelling with young children after hours in an airport terminal, it's pretty exhausting—to be stranded with some young kids who have nowhere to sleep but on the floor or on the chairs.

These experiences add up, and, over time, public confidence is damaged. One of the biggest frustrations people have with the aviation sector is the feeling that ordinary consumers are expected to carry all the risk. When things run smoothly, airlines operate commercially and profitably.

But, when things go wrong, too many passengers are left navigating a confusing complaints process with limited transparency and limited recourse. People often do not know who to contact, what rights they have, how long a complaint should take or whether anyone independent is overseeing the process. That imbalance really matters, because aviation is not an ordinary market in many parts of the country.

Consumers often have limited alternatives in Australia. That's just the reality of the Australian market. On some routes, there may only be two viable carriers—or even one.

So accountability matters even more in this space. Australians should not need to be legal experts to understand consumer rights, and they should not have to fight through layers of bureaucracy to get a response. They should not feel ignored after paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars for travel.

These bills establish a stronger aviation consumer protection framework in Australia. They create clearer standards, stronger oversight and, importantly, an independent avenue for complaints and consumer protection. The legislation establishes an Aviation Consumer Ombuds Scheme.

That is the most important part because independent complaints handling gives consumers confidence that somebody is listening to them as problems arise. The bills also strengthen information-sharing obligations and consumer protections around airline conduct and their complaints handling. This is about practical outcomes.

It's about making sure Australians are treated fairly when they engage with airlines and aviation service providers—not after months of confusion or endless emails and call waiting times but at the point where the problem occurs. The legislation is also supported through the aviation consumer protection levy arrangements, which ensure the scheme is properly funded and operational, and that principle is important too.

Strong consumer protection systems cannot exist on paper alone; they need resources, oversight and enforcement capacity. Good consumer protection is not antibusiness. In fact, strong consumer protections support confidence in the markets—people are more likely to engage with industries they trust, and trust matters enormously in aviation.

Australians hand over significant amounts of money to airlines and place enormous trust in them every single day—trust that they'll arrive safely, trust that they'll arrive on time and trust that, if something goes wrong, they'll be treated fairly. Most aviation workers work incredibly hard every day to uphold that trust. I definitely see that with my dad.

I understand the responsibility carried by people behind the scenes who keep planes operating safely and reliably—the cabin crews, the ground staff, the baggage handlers, the customer service workers, the air traffic controllers and the aircraft engineers and maintenance crews. It takes a lot of people to get a plane safely in the air and safely to its destination on time.

These workers carried enormous pressure during and after the pandemic, helping keep Australians moving through one of the most difficult periods the aviation industry has faced. Those workers are supported by this legislation, because it ensures confidence in the industry and it ensures confidence in their ongoing employment. It's about making sure the overall consumer system works better for the public and for workers.

Frankly, clear standards can also help workers because, too often, they are left carrying the frustration of customers without having the authority or the systems needed to resolve problems properly. In communities across Australia, people rely on aviation for connection and for opportunity. Families from multicultural communities travel internationally to maintain important relationships with loved ones, students travel for study and work opportunities, and small businesses rely on interstate movement and tourism connections.

When flights are unreliable or consumer protections are weak, those impacts ripple outwards, and regional Australia feels this even more sharply. A cancelled regional flight can mean missing medical treatment. It can mean losing a day's work.

It can mean being stranded away from home for hours. That's why stronger consumer protections matter nationally. We often say that we want an economy that works for people, not the other way around.

Part of that is ensuring that the benefits of a growing economy are shared with workers. We've backed pay rises—the pay rise of six per cent for the minimum wage at the Fair Work Commission and award-wage increases of 4.6 per cent that we'll see come into place from 1 July. We back workers by protecting their penalty rates in legislation and through same job, same pay legislation.

But having an economy that works for people also means having strong consumer protections. I've spoken in this place about the stronger protections that we have in the telecommunications industry, because that is another essential piece of modern infrastructure which we need to ensure consumers are properly protected in and at the heart of. We also have made the supermarket code of conduct mandatory.

We've outlawed price gouging—that's another measure that will come into place from 1 July—and we're addressing shrinkflation. This bill is another measure to make sure that we have an economy that works for people and that we have an aviation industry that works for people and that has consumers at its heart. This bill also forms part of the Albanese Labor government's broader work to strengthen fairness and accountability across the aviation sector.

For years, Australians have raised concerns about transparency, complaints handling and consumer rights in aviation, and they deserve a serious response to the concerns that were raised. This legislation responds to them. It recognises that consumer protections need to keep pace with the realities of modern aviation, and, importantly, it recognises that fairness is something that must be supported.

It's not, unfortunately, something that is always passed on to consumers. It has to be built into institutions, built into oversight and built into accountability. The establishment of an independent ombudsman framework is a practical step towards ensuring confidence that complaints will be heard fairly and independently, and that matters for consumers.

It matters for public trust because, when people feel ignored long enough, confidence in institutions starts to erode. At its core, this legislation is about fairness. It's about recognising that, when Australians purchase a ticket, they are not just buying a seat on a plane; they're investing in something really important.

It's time with family. It's a work opportunity, a major life event, medical care or connection. When disruptions happen, people deserve transparency, communication and fair treatment.

That should not depend on how persistent someone is, how many hours they can spend on hold or whether they can afford legal advice. It should be part of the system itself, and this bill moves us closer to that standard—a fairer and more accountable aviation system, one where consumers are treated with dignity, they're properly heard and accountability means something practical in people's everyday lives.

For those reasons, I commend this bill to the House.