The old phrase "The Floggings will continue until morale improves." comes to mind.
Assuming that Qantas operates with its usual ineptitude, I make the following predictions:
1) The cost of the redundancies will exceed expectations.
2) Within eighteen months there will be even more middle managers than there are now.
3) Efficency will decline even further for two reasons.
(a) Scared people make poor decisions, now that this move has been announced, little or no work will take place until those people involved have been given their marching orders. As usual, you can expect this will take a considerable time, thus maximising the pain and minimising any gain.
(b) Those that leave will be the wrong people. In large organisations, especialy ossified ones such as Qantas, it is not usual for a person's declared job function to be completely different from their actual function. Thus a person's function may look trivial but be vital or vice versa.
But try telling this to a management consultant to justify your existence and see what happens.
All I can say is "you poor bastards". Nobody deserves to be put through the wringer like this.