SYDNEY — Qantas Airways will axe approximately 850 corporate jobs across Australia and shift core back-office functions to consulting giant Accenture, sending the bulk of the affected roles to teams based in India.
Yet the cuts strike at the carrier's white-collar core. The planned retrenchments represent roughly 3% of the airline's total Australian workforce, wiping out desks across finance, procurement, human resources, and marketing. Under the multi-year pact, Accenture will assume control of key internal systems to accelerate artificial intelligence adoption and dismantle a bloated IT network choked by more than 1,000 incompatible legacy applications. The vote among executives was clear: modernize or stall.
CEO Vanessa Hudson defended the corporate shakeup in a memo to staff, describing the technological transformation as sweeping and inevitable. "The scale and speed of change in this space is unprecedented and unlike anything businesses have seen in generations," Hudson wrote, adding that the carrier will attempt to retain some staff through retraining, reskilling, and internal redeployment. "We know this will be difficult news for some of our people, and this decision is not a reflection of their contribution or commitment."
Labor representatives reacted swiftly. The Australian Services Union slammed the decision, warning that exporting critical corporate infrastructure imperils local institutional knowledge while shifting sovereign Australian jobs abroad. But Qantas executives insist the airline cannot scale its operations while juggling hundreds of disconnected software platforms that resist data integration.
Corporate Australia is moving in lockstep. The national carrier becomes the third major domestic heavyweight to push through large-scale layoffs inside three weeks, trailing recent headcount reductions at design platform Canva and National Australia Bank. The airline now enters mandatory consultation rounds with affected unions and employees, with the first phase of redundancies scheduled to take effect by mid-2027.