"Economic theory simply says that the "resources" all 36,000 of them will redeploy themselves in the longer term and make a bigger contribution to the economy than they did at Qantas."
This may be true, Sunfish. However,you can bet that those who are "redeployed" wont share in the benefits of being a more productive member of the economy. This is all part of the win-lose outcome that is sought by the current batch of capitalist pigs who run the Australian corporate economy; they win, workers lose.
Those who are retrenched make a bigger contribution to the economy by being more thoroughly exploited upon their eventual re-employment.
That is the nature of contempory capitalist ideoloy.
