Take a trip to Europe and you will realise that air travel is exceptionally inexpensive. This is because budget airlines such as Ryanair and EasyJet can break up long flights into multiple legs, selling tickets to passengers for what would otherwise be an almost-empty flight.

Cheap flights are also possible due to intense competition between European companies, ensuring the consumer can always get a good rate.

Sadly, the same can’t be said for Australia, where foreign airlines are barred from using regional airports as transit points. Senator Spender supports the campaign by Tourism Australia to let foreign airlines offer domestic services in Australia and will introduce legislation to this effect if elected on May 18.

Restricting competition hurts consumers and dissuades people from living in areas that are expensive to fly to. For Australians to pay what Europeans do for a flight, we need to cut red tape.

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