JAMES GLENDAY, HOST: Well let's get more on some of those stories and we're joined by the Federal Transport Minister, Catherine King. Minister, welcome back to the program.

MINISTER FOR INFRASTRUCTURE, TRANSPORT, REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT CATHERINE KING: Great to be with you.

GLENDAY: Now, I'm going to ask you about Western Sydney Airport in a moment, but I just want to take you to the breaking news that the US is retaliating against Iran. Are you worried that this fragile ceasefire could be coming to an end?

KING: We know that we need diplomatic solutions to end the conflict in in the Strait of Hormuz, and we want to urge all parties to continue to negotiate that. Understand this is a pretty fragile ceasefire and you're seeing that borne out, unfortunately, this morning.

GLENDAY: Yeah, Donald Trump started his war pretty easily in the Middle East. He's having a much more tricky time ending it. That's having a big impact back here in Australia. Are you open, if this doesn't resolve itself in the next couple of weeks, are you open to extending the current fuel excise cut?

KING: Well, we are doing everything we can to shield Australians from this conflict in the Middle East. The Prime Minister, the Energy Minister, Foreign Affairs Minister, Defence Minister have all been working incredibly hard on those relationships we have overseas to ensure that we've got the fuel supply we need here today, including in my portfolio that is so desperately reliant on diesel and jet fuel, particularly. The fuel excise reduction finishes in June. The road user charge reduction does as well. We're consulting, obviously, with industry about the impact of that, but people should at this stage expect that it's coming off at the end of June.

GLENDAY: What's that going to mean for trucking companies in particular? Because you mentioned the combination of the road user charge as well as the excise as well as the GST. That's going to be a really big hit, particularly for some smaller trucking companies who are saying we're going to pass on the cost, but it's still going to be really tricky to make ends meet in an industry where margins are small.

KING: Well, we're still talking to the trucking industry, still consulting with them at the moment about the impacts of continued high prices. That's really what we've been dealing with at the moment. Supply has obviously been secured because of that hard work that we've done, but the prices continue to create an impact for people as well. We'll continue talking to the trucking industry about the impact of that and keep trying to work our way through, trying to minimise the impact that prices are having across the system.

GLENDAY: Now, you're in Western Sydney this morning. Jetstar is going to become the first commercial operator to fly a commercial flight out of the new Western Sydney Airport. That's going to happen on 25 October. It's headed to the Gold Coast, that flight. Are you going to try to snag a ticket on it?

KING: No, I won't. I'll leave that to the general public to do that. It'll be a great opportunity. You know, it only happens once, first plane out of a brand-new airport. So, Sunday, 11am, 25th of October, to the Gold Coast. You know, this is 15 years of planning, seven years of building, a year of testing. The airport is ready to open and tickets are going on sale today, that first flight to the Gold Coast. But also there'll be 14 flights a week to Melbourne, flights to Brisbane, flights to the Gold Coast, as well as we've already got Singapore Airlines. Tickets have been on sale for a while, so that'll get you into Singapore and then to the world and Air New Zealand for flights to there as well. So, great day, 25th of October, first passengers out of Western Sydney International Airport, cargo starting in July.

GLENDAY: Yeah, the Prime Minister's a big aviation fan. Of course, he's been campaigning for the airport for some time. I wonder if he'll be on that first flight.

Just on freight, this is going to be a huge freight hub, this airport. How many flights are you expecting a day? What sort of difference are people in Western Sydney going to notice with planes going over their area?

KING: Well, it'll be quieter to start with. You're not going to have the volume that we're expecting through Western Sydney Airport on day one, but Qantas Freight will be flying out as of 26 July. It'll be a slow build-up for the airport. That is what we've planned to do. But, obviously, with any airport, there is a change to the circumstances that people are experiencing. We've taken a lot of time and effort to try and get the flight paths right and really work as much as we can with the local community, bearing in mind an airport is, by its very nature, going to have aircraft noise around it as well. So, you will see that. But being a non-curfewed airport, we'd expect freight really will start to ramp up in the years to come out of that airport.

GLENDAY: Minister, thank you so much for joining our program this morning.

KING: Great to be with you.