Swissport will be rubbing their hands together with this one and VA will follow suit shortly and all ramp services in all Australian airports will be provided by third party contractors.
Sad day for those involved they will go from a heavily unionised workforce loading a 737 with 6 people on $100k a year each and great staff travel benefits to loading it with 3 people on a good day, being paid $60k each full time with no benefits and greatly reduced rostering benefits.
This will be a tough pill to swallow but likely was going to happen over the next 5-10 years anyway. COVID/19 has simply accelerated the process, provided justification and prompted QF and JQ to act in this exceptionally rare time there will be minimal operational impact.
if this was attempted outside of COVID the staff would have walked off the job by now with airports severely disrupted. The unions will be furious that’s a lot of their hardcore members gone.