Ruling with a vapour-thin majority of one seat:

Australia PM under pressure over Qantas

Australia: Embattled Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard was Sunday under growing political pressure over the economically damaging grounding of her country’s national airline, Qantas. The prime minister is struggling to handle the explosive crisis created when Qantas made the stunning decision Saturday to ground all flights indefinitely in a bid to bring a standoff with unions to a head.

Gillard, who rules with a wafer-thin parliamentary majority of one seat, was slammed by both her political opponents and key players in the travel industry for failing to act sooner to avoid the unprecedented shutdown.

“It is tragic for all of these (passengers) that they can’t get home or can’t get to work because the government has failed to act,” Conservative opposition leader Tony Abbott said Sunday.

“The government has the powers in the existing act to resolve this dispute. The prime minister should use them and she should get the planes back in the skies safely as soon as possible,” he told reporters.

Gillard on Saturday took the rare step of ordering the country’s industrial arbiter to step in to end the grounding and the industrial action taken for months by unions to avoid damage to the economy.

But one of the nation’s largest travel firms also said she should have acted sooner to avoid the dramatic showdown that has frozen Qantas’ network and stranded 70,000 people.

Flight Centre Managing Director Graham Turner, who last week urged government intervention, said the industrial row had damaged the ailing tourism industry and disrupted travellers long before Saturday’s grounding.

“Given domestic tourism’s importance to the Australian economy, the government should have acted sooner to protect this extremely valuable asset,” he said.

Qantas has been locked in a months-long standoff with three key employees’ unions over pay and over the airline’s decision to refocus its international operations on Asia, a move that could cost 1,000 jobs.

The attacks came as Gillard was in the midst of hosting the Commonwealth Heads of Government summit in Perth, where some heads of states’ delegations have been stranded by the Qantas shutdown.

Gillard, who was already under fire for her failure to secure the passage of controversial new asylum policy and for her highly-unpopular tax on carbon emissions, had been hoping for a boost in her flagging fortunes.

Sydney, Sunday, AFP