Oh, boy!
Now we have to learn to speak with an American accent for them to be able to understand us.
That is nonsense.
Anyone who has ever interacted with Filipinos knows that the younger segment of the population easily understands most Australian accents.
The hypocrisy of people criticising this move is that we simply are no longer competitive for this type of work. It's an indication of our cost structures here, including triple time for public holiday work and double time for Sundays, plus 9.5 per cent compulsory superannuation (often into an industry fund where the trustees rip off contributors through hefty 'insurance' monthly debits) and many other oncosts not found in much of Asia.
Qantas might derive 40 per cent of its revenues from overseas tourists and businessmen, so it's not totally an Australian-centric company. It's also about 48 or 49 per cent foreign owned if I recall. What percentage of QF's passengers on its recently launched SYD - PEK - SYD flights would hold an Australian passport? 20?
Trade is an exchange where both sides win. We win in supplying advanced services like architecture, legal and accountancy to places like Indonesia, Singapore and Philippines. In return, it's only fair that they supply some services to us including if need be call centre operators or back office operators, given a post above that suggests NZ will actually be handling the calls and Philippines the back office work.
And by the way, I've found some Australian-based call centre agents - particularly in energy utilities - to be absolute shockers when it comes to being even slightly empathetic or efficient.
In contrast, many Filipinos appear to do a pretty good job. It will be up to QF to train them (or the Kiwis) properly and ensure that the supervisors are sufficiently robust in their knowledge to solve some of the more difficult questions FF users will come to them with. And of course reliability and quality of the lines from Philippines down to Oz will be important.
Probably some of the above negative remarks are from those who still believe we should be manufacturing cars in Australia.
Let's celebrate what Australia is good at, but not deny emerging, fast growing economies that have good relations with Australia (and Philippines happens to be one of the fastest growing economies in the world) the chance to also enjoy the material fruits that so many of us in Australia take for granted. Things like having the disposable income to save, or - close to many AFFers' hearts - to travel internationally.