Qantas to close Vic, Qld call centres
Qantas Airways (QAN) is set to close two call centres in Victoria and Queensland as part of its cost-cutting program.
The airline will close its Melbourne call centre, which has 250 full-time equivalent positions, by mid-2015 and its Brisbane operation with 200 more jobs by 2016, in favour of a single facility in Hobart.
The changes are part of Qantas' plans to cut 5,000 jobs after swinging to a first-half net loss in February.
But the federal government is playing the states against one another by using incentives to draw Qantas call centre jobs from Melbourne to Tasmania, a senior Victorian government minister says.
Victorian Planning Minister Matthew Guy said his federal Coalition counterparts had offered incentives to lure the call centre jobs to Tasmania.
"It's utterly unhelpful for the federal government to be assisting Tasmania to move jobs out of Victoria to Tasmania," Mr Guy told reporters.
"We put an offer on the table and it's very much a sad fact that it wasn't supported, but this government will do everything we can to support Victorian jobs, whether it's through infrastructure projects, whether it's through planning law changes to allow greater economic activity, we will do what we can.
"But we don't like the idea of the feds taking sides in a state-by-state battle."
He said Victoria had a bid on the table worth millions of dollars to keep the jobs in Melbourne.