Warren Truss denies state bias for Qantas call centre

THE Qantas decision to hand Tasmania its national call centre work has reopened debate about taxpayer-funded handouts to business.

THE Qantas decision to hand Tasmania its national call-centre work has reopened debate about taxpayer-funded handouts to business and intergovernment rival­ry for contracts.

The Tasmanian government has been accused of spending up to $8 million in order to secure the rights to base the airline’s call-­centre work in the southern state, with up to 450 jobs to go in Queensland and Victoria.

The decision has angered the Victorian government, which claims the airline carrier wanted close to $8m plus new infrastructure, but without any guarantee of retaining job numbers.

Employees in the Brisbane and Melbourne call centres will be offered redeployment to Hobart, where the airline will base its call-centre operations in a single facility by 2016.

Victorian Planning Minister Matthew Guy claimed that Tasmania received special assistance from the Abbott government to secure the contract, a claim denied by the federal government and Qantas.

“It’s utterly unhelpful for the federal government to be assisting Tasmania to move jobs out of Victoria to Tassie,” Mr Guy claimed.

“We don’t like the idea of the feds taking sides in a state-by-state battle.”

A spokesman for Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said: “There has been no federal assistance provided in relation to ­Qantas’s decision to consolidate its call-centre operations in ­Tasmania.’’

Qantas Domestic chief executive Lyell Strambi said operating three call centres in different states was not efficient. Travellers increasingly preferred to book flights online, with call volumes having halved since 2005.

Workers who chose not to move and were employed­ until the closure of their centre would get redundancy packages.

Additional reporting: AAP