One of Australia’s biggest AI workplace stories just landed, and it is not theoretical anymore.
Australian software company WiseTech Global says it plans to cut about 2,000 jobs over the next two years as it pushes deeper into artificial intelligence across its products and internal operations. Reuters reports that the cuts amount to nearly a third of the company’s roughly 7,000-strong global workforce.
The planned reductions are expected to hit areas including product development and customer service, with Reuters reporting that some teams inside the company’s US-based cloud arm e2open could face cuts of up to 50 per cent.
WiseTech chief executive Zubin Appoo made the company’s position unusually clear. According to ABC, he said “the era of manually writing code as a core act of engineering is over”, pointing to the growing role AI now plays in software development.
Reuters reported that Appoo said AI had dramatically accelerated the company’s work, allowing tasks that once took months or years to be completed in days. That framing matters because it shows this is not being presented as a temporary cost-cutting exercise. It is being positioned as a structural shift in how the company thinks work should be done.
The announcement came alongside stronger-than-expected financial results. Reuters said WiseTech posted first-half net profit of $114.5 million, beating market expectations, and its shares jumped 11.1 per cent after the news.
That combination is what makes the story so striking. This was not a company warning of collapse. It was a profitable Australian tech firm telling the market that AI is changing the economics of staffing, engineering and support work right now. That is likely to sharpen concerns well beyond the tech sector.
The fallout has already triggered concern from organised labour. Reuters separately reported that an Australian union sought urgent talks with WiseTech after the company announced the AI-linked cuts, showing how quickly this decision has moved from boardroom strategy into a wider national debate about jobs, fairness and consultation.
For Australian workers, the bigger question is no longer whether AI will affect employment. It is which roles are most exposed first, how fast companies will move, and whether workers will get time to retrain before the next round of restructuring begins. WiseTech may not be the last major Australian company to make this kind of call.
Why this matters for Australia
This matters because WiseTech is not just any company. It is a major Australian tech success story, and when a business like that openly says AI is replacing large amounts of manual work, people notice.
It also pushes the AI debate out of Silicon Valley fantasy and into Australian reality. The issue is no longer just whether AI tools are clever or useful. It is whether Australian workers, universities, employers and governments are actually prepared for what happens when local companies start redesigning jobs around automation at scale.
If more Australian businesses follow WiseTech’s lead, the country may need a much bigger conversation about retraining, job security, workplace protections and which skills still hold value in an AI-heavy economy.
