Accenture

Chris Zappone. The government and the ASU criticised the decision to outsource 850 jobs and raised concerns that AI disruption could be used as an excuse for mass firings. ASU assistant national secretary Scott Cowen: "We need to make sure that these AI announcements and job cuts are genuine and not a Trojan horse for widespread offshoring." He said "This isn't the first announcement we've seen by big corporate giants in Australia where they announce a deal with a big tech giant like Accenture", citing Coles and Telstra, and asked "Is this using AI as the excuse to say the work can't be done internally because it's new or too specialised? And then [using] that as a way to outsource jobs from local communities?" He added: "If a huge corporation like Qantas is saying that it can't internally employ people as these new technologies are implemented ... then what company is going to be employing locals?" Vanessa Hudson: "Reinvention at this scale is not possible to do on our own ... because we cannot hire at the pace this work needs." The mechanism: in-house processes are sent to India where they are analysed and simplified, automation is added, and the process is re-incorporated into Qantas's Australian operations at a later date. Transport Minister Catherine King: "This has been a model that Qantas has been using for some time, outsourcing jobs, no longer having them in house"; "I think that we saw the last time that it engaged in this sort of level of outsourcing during COVID, that it did a significant amount of damage to its social licence"; "I think the union is right to be disappointed that it's resulting in 850 job losses"; "I think investing in the workforce that has basically built it should be a priority for Qantas"; and "My call to them is to work very closely with the unions to retrain, redeploy as many of those 850 people as possible because we need those AI capabilities here in Australia as well." Qantas received $2.7 billion in taxpayer subsidies during COVID and around the same time outsourced 1,800 ground crew in a move later ruled illegal. Ryan Perrett, one of the 1,800, said the airline "obviously has learnt nothing". Qantas says it remains a net employer with a growing 28,000-strong Australian workforce and more than 4,400 new operational roles added since 2023.

Qantas will cut 850 corporate roles and outsource the work to Accenture, delivered "mostly by its teams in India and some in Australia". The first wave covers finance, procurement and marketing, with the first changes expected in place by mid-2027 and the rest over coming years. Vanessa Hudson called it "hard news for some" and said the airline runs "on technology built up over decades for a different era, including more than 1,000 legacy applications that were never designed to work together", and that the deal "will allow us to unlock innovation faster and accelerate our use of AI, with lasting benefits". Qantas will look to redeploy "as many people as possible". ASU assistant national secretary Scott Cowen: "this is really shocking news for our members", and the union had been told there was "no plan for 1,000 jobs to be offshored". Qantas reported a statutory profit after tax of $1.29 billion for 2025/26. Its shares rose more than 6 per cent on the day. Qantas did not disclose how many of the 850 are redundancies and how many transfer to Accenture.

Rachel Noble, director-general of the Australian Signals Directorate until 2024, warned that outsourcing operations to offshore providers raises cybersecurity risk: "I think it has the potential to increase their risk, and in some cases significantly increase their risk of data theft, loss... Cyberattacks that occur through that offshore vector impact the heart of their operations." The article notes that major Australian companies including Origin Energy and Coles have outsourced parts of their operations to Accenture in multi-year deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and that Qantas is also mulling outsourcing parts of its operations to Accenture. It reports that the investigation into Origin's July breach, which exposed the personal information of almost a million customers, has focused on a former Accenture employee working in Manila, where Origin had outsourced key billing and customer support functions. Island Bell chief executive Charlie O'Connell said companies remain responsible when offshore arrangements fail: "Sticking something over there, outside of this country, for me just feels like a risk."

Origin Energy disclosed that a July 2026 breach exposed data belonging to roughly 900,000 current and former customers. Full bank account numbers were exposed for about 60 customers, ID document numbers for about 100, and government concession scheme numbers for about 15,000; most affected customers had name, address, date of birth, phone number, account information and partial card or account digits exposed. "Investigators linked the hack to a former Manila-based employee of Accenture, a consulting firm that helps Origin operate its call centres." The individual allegedly intended to extort Origin using the data.

The Australian Financial Review reported that Qantas was exploring outsourcing up to 1,000 roles to India across marketing, finance, HR and other back-office functions under an internal programme called "Project iQ", with Accenture as the prospective partner. Qantas responded: "We have been exploring partnerships that have the capability to support us and are in early discussions with Accenture, but no formal agreement is in place and no decisions have been made." Qantas added: "Like all organisations, Qantas has been looking at ways to accelerate the use of technology and AI to help us modernise the way we work and deliver better outcomes for our customers and our people." ASU National Secretary Scott Cowen: "If that commitment from Qantas turns out to be worthless, it won't just be a broken promise to the ASU. It will be a deep breach of trust with the Australian public who have stuck by this airline through everything it has put them through." Frontline operational roles — pilots, cabin crew, engineers — are not in scope of the reported programme.

BOM awarded Accenture $16M for climate data website. Previous Accenture contract started at $4M, blew out to $96M, and failed during major storms. Senator Whish-Wilson: "The last Accenture contract with the BoM website was a diabolical shitshow."

Accenture is now the largest consultancy working for government. Federal contracts total $6.5 billion since 2013. Nine major consulting firms shared $17.6 billion in federal contracts. Accenture CEO Peter Burns admitted to Senate committee that the firm does "power mapping" — systematically charting who holds influence inside government departments.

Federal government extended Accenture aged care contract by $332M in December 2025. Initial contract $258.5M, now $590.5M total. Part of $1.4B aged care digital overhaul. Accenture paid $500K+ per day for 2 years.

Accenture received $78 million for the BOM website, despite the original contract forecasting just $31 million.

Deloitte received $35 million for its work on the BOM site instead of the original $11 million forecasted. Idle resources within Accenture were waiting for work to be completed by Deloitte, driving costs up.

Accenture, which built the BOM website, has major development centres in India and the Philippines.

Union hits out at proposed offshoring of ATO test & dev By Paris Cowan Sep 12 2014 12:34PM 7 Tax Office insists no financial data will be stored overseas. Australia’s public service union has kicked up a stink over a proposal being assessed by the Tax Office that would see its application development and testing sent to the Philippines. The ATO has confirmed that it is thinking about handing its test and dev functions to Accenture, which already undertakes hundreds of millions of dolla

Rio Tinto partnered with Accenture for cloud-based as-a-service model.

Accenture has been paid more than $100 million for PCEHR infrastructure support, and another $111 million for data warehousing.