Children in remote communities denied seats on near-empty ‘Indigenous-only’ charter flights

The Australian government will review charter flight arrangements for students living in remote outback communities after claims non-Indigenous students were prevented from boarding planes because they were not ABSTUDY recipients.

Derek Lord, a father of two boys living in the far north west Queensland town of Normanton about five hours north of Mt Isa and eight hours west of Cairns in the Gulf of Carpentaria, said his sons faced a “six-day ordeal” to get home after they were not allowed to purchase seats on a nearly empty, taxpayer-funded flight.

Lord, who is the Air Traffic Services Reporting Officer at the tiny Normanton Airport, said he regularly sees 20-seat planes arriving with fewer than half the seats occupied.

But he claims his two sons, who board at school in Charters Towers, 90 minutes southwest of Townsville, have been turned away from those same flights because they’re not ABSTUDY recipients.

“My boys have been left sitting at the airport, bags packed, because they weren’t allowed on a plane with empty seats,” Lord said in a statement via Katter’s Australian Party (KAP) Leader and Member for Traeger, Robbie Katter.

“We’d gladly pay for those seats — anything to avoid the six-day ordeal we have to go through with commercial flights to get them home for the holidays when roads were cut off due to flooding.”

ABSTUDY, introduced in 1969, is a federal government scheme for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people that offers education-related financial assistance, including course fees and travel costs for students who study away from home.

Katter has slammed the new school charter flight arrangement as fundamentally flawed and unfair, describing it as a system that fosters division and fails to meet the needs of remote communities.

“This is not an Indigenous problem. It’s a remote living problem,” Katter said.

“When you’ve got families living in the same town, sending their kids to the same school, but being treated differently — that’s wrong. It risks creating division in communities where it doesn’t exist.”

Katter said the situation had been made worse by the government’s decision to hand the contract to a UK-based operator with no local experience, replacing long-time provider Volantair.

“We had a capable, locally based operator with 20 years’ experience and regional knowledge,” he said.

“Now we’ve got a foreign company charging up to $1157 per ABSTUDY seat — almost triple what a regular flight costs — and delivering a shambolic service.”

The new operator, Air Charter Services, was appointed last year by Corporate Travel Management (CTM), which is responsible for the ABSTUDY charter contract.

Air Charter Services and CTM have been contacted for comment.

Since the change, according to Katter, planes had shown up without passengers to collect, flights had gone unused, and single-engine aircraft without weather radar had been deployed into some of Queensland’s toughest flying conditions.

“Kids are being left stranded, rural and remote families are being ignored,” Katter said.

“It’s time these services were made available to any child living remotely — not just those eligible under a narrow government program — and returned to experienced local operators who know the land, know the people, and care about the outcomes.”

Speaking to 2GB’s Ben Fordham on Tuesday, Lord said he had even tried paying for seats on the planes but his sons were denied “because they don’t fall under ABSTUDY”.

“The carrier even agreed to take our money but the booking company that now does it, which is overseas, refused to allow our children to get on because they don’t meet the criteria,” he said.

“We don’t understand it either. It’s taxpayer-funded. Even if we weren’t willing to pay, the plane is coming here, it’s being paid for by everyone’s taxes whether you’re Indigenous or non-Indigenous, the kids are from the same town.”

Lord noted “we’re in the middle of a flood crisis and we couldn’t get in our out”, recounting the tortuous journey home for his sons.

“So there was no way to get our kids home unless it’s on a private charter ourselves, or through Rex, and Rex can be up to two, three weeks waiting for a seat,” he said.

“We would have to bus them down to Townsville and then either bus them or plane them up to Cairns, and then they’d have to sit in Cairns over the weekend because there’s no Rex flights, and then they’d have to fly home on Rex if we could get a Monday or Tuesday flight, and that’s a big if.”

He said “even Indigenous leaders here don’t understand it”.

“I don’t think it’s about reconciliation, I think it’s more about that the system is broken,” he said.

“The gap is not a gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous per se, it’s regional versus non-regional. If you actually compared the two I think you’d find many of the non-Indigenous kids and families have the same disadvantages as Indigenous people in rural or remote communities.”

Lord added that son’s girlfriend was Indigenous and “the first time this happened, she got on one flight and he had to get on the other”.

Fordham said it was “absolutely mad”.

“Just put the kids on the same damn plane,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek told news.com.au the matter was being reviewed.

“The ABSTUDY program was introduced in 1969 by Liberal National Prime Minister John Gorton to help Indigenous students from very remote communities get access to education,” she said.

“Charter flights are only used where it is the cheapest or most cost effective alternative, from very remote communities. The allocation of spare seats is a matter for the charter company. The government agrees that empty seats should be made available for other students or community members to purchase where safe and practical to do so. The Minister will request updated advice from her department on this issue to ensure charter fees reflect value for money.”

The Department of Finance, which manages all the whole of the Australian government travel contract, has previously clarified that CTM has no exclusive agreements with charter companies and will choose charter providers for the ABSTUDY program based on the needs of ABSTUDY travelers.

“CTM has encouraged competition through the expansion of charters available to be booked for the government, including the ABSTUDY program,” a spokeswoman for the department told Cairns Post last year.

“They have also recently included an additional 12 new charter service providers to the program, including two Indigenous businesses.”