Opposition Leader Sussan Ley has appointed Tasmanian conservative Jonathon (Jonno) Duniam to replace Andrew Hastie in the high profile frontbench post of shadow minister for home affairs.

Hastie’s quitting the frontbench has forced Ley into a limited reshuffle, only a month after she had to make changes following forcing Jacinta Nampijinpa Price off the frontbench for failing to embrace her leadership.

Hastie complained he was being excluded from a role in the formulation of immigration policy.

Julian Leeser, from NSW, who has been shadow attorney-general, will replace Duniam as spokesman on education and early learning. Leeser will continue as shadow minister for the arts.

Andrew Wallace, from Queensland, who was speaker at the end of Morrison government, becomes shadow attorney-general. He was formerly a barrister who worked in construction law.

The reshuffle comes as a Resolve poll in Nine newspapers finds Ley’s approval plunging in the wake of weeks of intense infighting over the direction of the Liberal Party, and specifically over net zero and immigration.

Only 33% said Ley’s performance was good or very good, a collapse of eight points in a month; 38% said her performance was poor or very poor, compared with 32% last month. Her net rating is minus 5, compared to plus 9 last month.

Wallace will be replaced on the parliamentary joint committee on intelligence and security by Phillip Thompson, a Queenslander, who formerly served in the military and holds the posts currently of shadow assistant minister for defence and shadow assistant minister for the NDIS.

Victorian Zoe McKenzie becomes shadow cabinet secretary. She remains shadow assistant minister for education and early learning.

Aaron Violi, also from Victoria, becomes shadow assistant minister for communications. Cameron Caldwell, from Queensland, will be shadow assistant minister for housing and for mental health.

Duniam said in a statement, “Under the Albanese Labor Government, there have been appalling decisions which undermine national security and erode trust in our institutions.

"The return of ISIS brides, facilitated by the Minister for Home Affairs without transparency or accountability, is just one of a string of failures. Communities deserve answers, not secrecy from this Government which is failing its promise to be upfront with Australians.”

Leeser said in a statement, “Having previously worked in the university sector, and served on education boards, I bring practical experience to this position and will focus on evidence-based reforms that lift standards from early learning, through to schools and into tertiary education.

"Under Anthony Albanese and Labor, Australia’s literacy and numeracy standards have slipped, and parents are rightly demanding action. At the same time, our higher education sector is in crisis, and universities continue to allow antisemitism to go unchecked.”

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

We were greeted by green from the markets overnight as AI once again steps in to save the day. What bubble??

Elevator Pitch: what you need to know to start your day

• Treasurer Dr Jim Chalmers retreats from gung-ho Super Tax (Switzer)
• How the Super Tax changes affect you (Switzer)
• Our energy bills could be set to go down by half, but you'll have to wait until 2050 (Guardian)

Overnight markets and ASX outlook

• In the US, the S&P500 closed up 1.56% at 6654; the NASDAQ gained 2.21% to close at 22,694; abroad, Euro markets joined in with a models 0.67% gain to close at 5568 on the EUROSTOXX50 ; the Nikkei continued to fall, however, shedding 1.01% for 48,088 at close, and the Hang Seng closed down 1.52% at 25,889 and ASX futures are tracking modestly up 0.35% ahead of our local open in a few hours.

In the diary: today's data

Australia

• RBA Board meeting minutes: The September meeting minutes are released, offering insights into the central bank’s latest decision to hold rates steady at 3.60%.
• Rio Tinto: Third-quarter production update due.

United States

• US bank earnings kickoff: BlackRock, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo report third-quarter results.

Today’s big number

738: the number of days that hostages were held in the Israel v Gaza conflict.

What do Tiger Woods, Ben Stiller, Australian pensioners and dating app users have in common? Despite being from different walks of life, they have all fallen prey to various scams.

In 2024, more than A$2.03 billion was lost to scams in Australia across 494,732 reported cases. Most of these scams were enabled by technology, with scammers contacting their victims either online or on the phone. However, about 600 of these scams happened in person.

All of us are vulnerable to being scammed – it’s rooted in who we are as human beings. If you think you’re immune, you are not. Police officers fall for scams. Even cyber security professionals fall for scams. So what hope is there for the rest of us?

What does help is to understand the underlying techniques online scammers rely on, so that you can better spot them. These psychological tactics are similar to those used in offline scams, street cons and social engineering in general. But they’re also reminiscent of techniques used in advertising, marketing and any other industry where the goal is to persuade you.

Unmasking the influence principles

The goal of a scammer is to try and influence you to part with your money or other valuable possessions. They rely on classic persuasion and influence principles that take advantage of our psychology and other aspects in our lives.

The reason we pay attention to scammers in the first place is because they rely on the need and greed principle, promising us something we need or desire. In romance scams, that’s love. In investment scams, that’s money. It could also be a job or status.

Scammers may use the authority principle, such as pretending to be your boss and requesting you to transfer money, a scam known as business email compromise.

Or they may use the kindness principle to get you to donate to some bogus humanitarian cause in what are known as fake charity scams.

The principle underlying some of the most costly scams in Australia, such as impersonation, romance, and payment redirection scams is the distraction principle. This relies on us missing the scammers’ “sleight of hand” and clues as to their real intentions.

We are all social animals and believe in safety in numbers. Scammers know this and will use the herd or social proof principle to convince us that we are missing out on those hard-to-get concert tickets, for example.

An insidious form of a foot-in-the-door technique relies on the dishonesty principle. In this case, the scammers might entice you to install a VPN (which happens to be malware) to bypass your organisations’ firewalls or to provide use of your bank account for some international money transfer in money mule scams.

American psychologist Robert Cialdini has noted many of these principles are what salespeople use to get you into buying something you didn’t really want. They are also the principles that politicians, friends and family use to get you to agree to their requests. In other words, they’re not always a sign that you’re being scammed.

To identify a scam, ask yourself these three simple questions:

• what is the intent?
• who benefits?
• do I have a free, informed choice?

Rushing to pay for a holiday booking because the countdown timer indicates you have two minutes left relies on the same scarcity principle as when you transfer your savings into a once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity. The former is a legitimate transaction, while the latter is an investment scam in which you lose.

Ultimately, the core problem is that every day, we are constantly exposed to such nudges – in the media, online, and in our daily interactions. Over time, it can become difficult to recognise when these nudges are used for negative ends (called “sludges”), and in scams.

This is why anyone can be scammed

Anything that makes us human can be exploited to influence us. Our perception, emotions, relationships, thinking and beliefs can be used to influence our behaviours.

All personality types are susceptible to persuasion, although their “Achilles’ heel” may vary. For example, people who are agreeable (cooperative, kind, compassionate) are generally found to be more susceptible to persuasion, which may make them more susceptible to scammers.

While not everyone will fall for common or generic scams, any of us can fall for a targeted and well-executed one. Demographics play a role in whom scammers choose to target to increase their success rates.

In Australia in 2024, elderly people were commonly targeted in investment and romance scams, while mothers lost thousands to “Hi Mum” scams where someone posing as a family member asks for money. Young people fell prey to threat-based scams. Men tended to lose money in investment scams, while women were more vulnerable to romance scams.

Don’t be too confident

Importantly, overconfidence in our scam savviness can work against us. When we have high trust in our abilities, we tend to assess situations as less risky, taking mental shortcuts in decision-making. Such mental shortcuts can cause us to miss critical cues and red flags.

Different sectors in Australia are working together to warn us all about scams. The “Stop. Check. Protect” approach recommended by Scamwatch also provides very helpful tips to better protect yourself.

Remember today could be the day you get scammed. Prepare accordingly and stay vigilant.

Mamello Thinyane, Associate Professor | Optus Chair of Cybersecurity and Data Science, University of South Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Albanese government has finally announced a major retreat on its proposed controversial superannuation changes.

The plan to tax unrealised capital gains has been dumped altogether, and the proposed new $3 million threshold will be indexed, as well as a $10 million threshold that is being added.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (currently on a week’s holiday) drove the retreat, which was announced by Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Earlier on Monday the cabinet ticked off on the revamp of the original plan.

Chalmers said he had been working on alterations to his earlier plan for some time. He denied he had been “rolled” by the prime minister. “Of course not,” he said.

“The prime minister and I have had discussions over recent months about finding another way to satisfy the same objectives, and that’s what’s happened here,” he said.

Albanese’s caution on the original superannuation changes is being interpreted as a warning Chalmers will have difficulty getting the prime minister to agree to any ambitious tax reform he might hope to make.

The government took the original plan to tax at 30% the earnings on balances of more than $3 million to the election. That plan also included a move to tax unrealised capital gains. Critics pointed out that taxing unrealised gains would hit those with non-liquid assets such as farms in their superannuation. The failure to index the threshold would draw an increasing proportion of people into the new tax net.

The proposals have been under attack for months, including from former treasurer and prime minister Paul Keating who directly lobbied Albanese.

Keating said in a statement after the announcement, “these decisions solidify superannuation tax arrangements in a manner the community can now rely upon for the long-term security of their retirement savings and with it, their peace of mind”.

Keating went out of his way to give credit to Chalmers for the work.

Under the rejigged plan the government has added another threshold, of $10 million, to its original plan. On earnings on balances between $3 million and $10 million, the tax rate will be 30%. On earning on balances over $10 million the rate will be 40%.

At present the tax on superannuation earnings is 15%.

Chalmers said the changes were practical and pragmatic and satisfied the same objective and the original proposal.

He said there would be commensurate treatment of defined benefit interests.

The changes would extend the existing exemptions for some judges to improve consistency across jurisdictions.

The government is also increasing the low-income superannuation tax offset (the LISTO) by $310 to $810 and raising the eligibility threshold from from $37,000 to $45,000 from July 2027. This will cost $435 million over the forward estimates. The LISTO is a boost provided by the government for the superannuation of low income earners.

The start of the new plan, which had been due to begin from July 1 this year, has been delayed until July 1 next year.

The net impact on the budget of the rework is about $4.2 billion over the forward estimates, much of which is due to the one year delay in implementation.

In the first full year of operation, 2028-29, the package will bring a budget saving of about $1.6 billion in net terms, including the cost of increasing the LISTO.

Chalmers said the legislation would be introduced as soon as possible in 2026.

The treasurer spoke with the Greens – whose support the government expects to need to pass the legislation – on Monday. Later the Greens said in a statement they would look at the detail of the changes but were concerned that “the government has further weakened what should be a tax to ensure the super wealthy top 0.5% pay their fair share of tax”.

Shadow treasurer Ted O'Brien said the opposition had fought the original unfair plan all the way and this was “a victory for a coalition of common sense”.

“The treasurer has been chewed up and his tax plan has been chucked out.”

Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Big falls in overseas markets pave the way for a wild week of even bigger local market news.

As usual, this info comes to us from the experts at CommSec.

Tuesday

Australia

• RBA Board meeting minutes: The September meeting minutes are released, offering insights into the central bank’s latest decision to hold rates steady at 3.60%.
• Rio Tinto: Third-quarter production update due.

United States

• US bank earnings kickoff: BlackRock, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo report third-quarter results.

Wednesday

Australia

• RBA Assistant Governor Sarah Hunter speech: Speaking at the Citi Investment Conference.
• Bank of Queensland: Earnings update due.
• CBA AGM: Commonwealth Bank hosts its annual general meeting.

United States

• US inflation data: The September CPI report is released, with headline and core inflation tipped to rise 0.3%–0.4% for the month and annual headline growth expected to lift to 3.1%.
• Bank earnings continue: Abbott Laboratories, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley report results.

Thursday

Australia

• Labour force data (September): Economists expect around 30,000 new jobs, with unemployment steady at 4.2% and participation rising to 66.9%.
• RBA Governor Michele Bullock speech: Fireside chat at the Nomura Research Forum in Washington DC.
• RBA Assistant Governor Christopher Kent speech: Speaking at the CFA Society Australia Investment Conference.
• Santos: Third-quarter production update scheduled.

United States

• TSMC earnings: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing reports third-quarter results.

Friday

United States

• Corporate earnings wrap: Results due from Amex and SLB (Schlumberger).

Ongoing Themes

• Dividend flow: Around $1.6 billion in payouts expected to reach Australian investors this week, according to CommSec.
• RBA communication blitz: Three key Reserve Bank speeches in one week signal a focus on labour market strength and inflation outlooks.
• Market sentiment: Investors will be watching both Australian jobs data and US inflation closely ahead of the Federal Reserve’s October 28–29 policy meeting.

Key themes to watch this week

• RBA in focus: A packed week of Reserve Bank communications with meeting minutes released Tuesday, followed by speeches from Assistant Governors Sarah Hunter and Christopher Kent, and Governor Michele Bullock speaking in Washington DC on Thursday.
• Aussie jobs data: September labour force figures expected to show around 30,000 new jobs, keeping unemployment steady at 4.2% and participation at 66.9%.
• US inflation watch: The September CPI report lands Wednesday, with economists tipping a 0.3%–0.4% monthly rise and annual headline inflation lifting to around 3.1%.
• Local earnings and updates: Bank of Queensland reports Wednesday; Rio Tinto (Tuesday) and Santos (Thursday) deliver production updates; CBA hosts its AGM midweek.
• Dividends flow: Around $1.6 billion in payouts expected to reach Australian investors this week, according to CommSec.
• US bank earnings season: Major results from BlackRock, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Wells Fargo (Tuesday); Bank of America and Morgan Stanley (Wednesday); TSMC (Thursday); and Amex and SLB (Friday).

and PepsiCo (Thursday), and BlackRock (Friday).

Check back next Monday for the latest investor calendar, only on Switzer.

We’re living through an unusual period that I call bully economics.

Stocks are set to slide today, and question is: who do we blame: Xi Jinping or Donald Trump? We’re living through an unusual period that I call bully economics but even though Donald Trump isn’t my kind of guy socially and even economically, I’m glad the West at least has a bully who’ll take on the likes of Xi and his mate in Russia — Vlad Putin!

As the history-aware George Bernard Shaw once noted in his book Man and Superman: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

Back to the markets and our S&P/ASX 200 Index is set to open 84 points down. This move started with the bully boys in Beijing, with the announcement that there would be new rules for using Chinese rare earths.

Beijing has ruled foreign producers must obtain a licence to export products that contain more than 0.1% of rare earth coming from China. And the edict goes further saying it applies to rare earth exports manufactured using Chinese extraction, refining, magnet-making or recycling technology!

This ‘catch-all’ rule starts on December 1. And as I told my Switzer Report subscribers on Saturday, “Donald Trump has gone MAD!”

He turned to his beloved self-owned Truth Social and has blasted Beijing saying that “there is no way that a country should be allowed to hold the world ‘captive’ with its rare earth policy”.

While this was his general view on the subject, he backed it up with this threat that he’s practised in: “One of the policies that we are calculating at this moment is a massive increase of tariffs on Chinese products coming into the United States of America,” Trump wrote. “There are many other countermeasures that are, likewise, under serious consideration. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

This ‘tough arse’ policy from Xi Jinping’s team follows an ongoing battle with BHP.

Lately, Beijing has instructed Chinese steel mills to stop buying BHP iron ore because they can’t agree on price. (For the economics students out there, we all know what a nasty monopolist who makes everything can do, but a monopsonist, who’s the biggest or only buyer in a market can also play unfair hardball too, which China is showing right now.)

Rare earths are critical to many products essential to global production and includes smartphones, electric vehicles, TVs, MRI machines, wind turbines and anything we would call hi-tech!

This bully boy battle explains why our local rare earths producer Lynas Rare Earths is up 155% in a year! This chart shows how the one-year story is out of sync with the five-year story, and shareholders can thank Beijing for that!

Lynas Rare Earths (LYC)

How Donald Trump responds to this will determine the fate of world trade and global stock markets.

China is accusing Trump of double standards, given his tariff policies that were a threat of a 100% tariff on Chinese exports to the US if Beijing didn’t play ball.

That threat the US President unleashed on Friday wiped out US$2 trillion of share market value in a day!

To be fair, even to the Beijing bully, this is what the China trade ministry says: “For a long time … [the US] has been overstretching the concept of national security, abusing export control, taking discriminatory actions against China, and imposing unilateral long-arm jurisdiction measures on various products, including semiconductor equipment and chips.”

CNBC tell us that China argues that “the U.S. Commerce Control list covers more than 3,000 items, more than three times the approximately 900 items on China’s Export Control List of Dual-use Items.”

This could be a case of Trump over-bullying China or that China has too many products that threaten the West!

While I’m no fan of bullies, I’m glad in a world of too many bullies, the West has Donald Trump to deal with the likes of Xi, Putin and even entrepreneurial bullies like Elon Musk! History has shown that reasonable men like Joe Biden weren’t competitive enough (i.e., not bullying enough) to deal with the new world we live in.

I know we’re living in crazy times, but bullying isn’t just coming from political quarters. In NSW, the workplace insurer is $5.4 billion in debt. Premiums paid by employers, who mainly are small business owners, are set to see a 36% rise in premiums to cover their employees for compensation from injuries.

However, too many workers are rorting and gaming the system claiming bullying and harassment. And Labor Treasurer Daniel Mookhey is fighting unions and even the Liberal Opposition to reduce payouts for bullying and the like, so the insurance system doesn’t collapse!

Not only is Xi Jinping and Donald Trump bullying each other, and Putin bullying Ukraine but workers are now bullying employers after years of bosses being accused of doing exactly the same thing!

Yep, bullying is out of control. We need sensible leaders to sort this out here and everywhere! Who knows, voters might even vote for politicians that show a commitment to common sense.

Get ready for a rocky week on the market.

The numbers are in from last Friday's Wall Street sell-off, with $1.6 trillion wiped from tickers all across exchanges. Batten down the hatches: this week might get rough.

What happened?

In case you were wondering where all the loud noises were coming from, the US had a horror trading day on their Friday of last week.

All in all, $1.6 trillion vanished in a single day. Spooked investors took profit and cautious investors fled to safety (either gold or cash under their mattresses). Either way, it meant it wasn't in the market anymore.

It all started after China threatened to restrict the export of its rare earth metals. Tariffs which had been more or less priced in as the US continues its round of trade deal negotiations, are now well and truly back on the front-burner.

The United States depends heavily on China’s rare earth metals because they are essential for both its high-tech economy and national security. Rare earths such as neodymium, dysprosium and terbium are critical for producing the powerful magnets used in electric vehicles, smartphones, wind turbines, and precision-guided weapons. Yet the U.S. produces only a fraction of what it consumes and still sends most of its mined ore to China for processing. China controls about 70 percent of global rare earth mining and more than 90 percent of refining capacity, according to the U.S. Geological Survey and the International Energy Agency.

Trump responded in kind, threatening new 100% tariffs on China for its actions, starting from November 1.

And it took a toll on markets everywhere. In the US, the Dow was down 2.71% on the last day of their week, closing down at 6552 (from 6748 at the Friday open); the NASDAQ shed numbers, closing at 22,204, down from 23,054 at the open. Abroad, Euro markets suffered with the EUROSTOXX50 dropping 1.68% to 5531; the Nikkei shed just over 1% at 48,088; the Hang Seng closed down 1.73% at 26,290 and ASX futures are tracking down 0.7% ahead of our local open in a few hours.



Reading the tea leaves

There is a way to see how jittery traders are on a market these days, and that's thanks to the VIX index.

As I had previously explained in an article just a few months ago:

The CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) - a measure of S&P 500 options pricing - has demonstrated a response to these conflicts categorised by significant investor skittishness. Put simply, when the VIX index goes up, investors are typically moving away from equities and into safer assets like gold or bonds. An upward push in the index is usually triggered by world news that brings with it disruption and uncertainty.

In October 2023 when the Israel-Gaza situation developed into conflict, VIX went to around 25 over oil fears in the region. When Russia first invaded Ukraine in February 2022, VIX jumped to 36 over - again - oil concerns, but also over European supplies of gas and Ukrainian agriculture exports to the rest of the world (or lack thereof).

The sell-off following Trump’s April 2025 tariff announcement spiked VIX to over 50. But these upward reports haven’t been historic highs for VIX. Not by any means. Anything above 50 is considered time to panic, and at the height of the GFC in 2008, for example, VIX spiked to 80. COVID-19 lockdowns forced it even higher to 85.

This morning, the US VIX is now up to 21.66 from a calmer 16.37 before Trump's comments late last week. While it's not the panic we saw during COVID or the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it's still a significant jump.

Australia has its own VIX index, which is currently tracking at a more sedate 10.72. To put that into perspective, however, Liberation Day tariff announcements back in April pushed it to 19. We'll keep an eye on it today.

What's happening this week on markets?

The US government shutdown is now in its second week, and as a result, data releases are either delayed or just not being issued at all. We'll have to watch the market to try and interpret that particular black box going forward.

In a busy week of Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) communications, the Board’s September meeting minutes are issued on Tuesday, followed by speeches and fireside chats by RBA Assistant Governors Sarah Hunter (Wednesday) and Christopher Kent (Thursday). Governor Michele Bullock also speaks on Thursday morning in Washington DC.

Also on Thursday, Commonwealth Bank (CBA) Group economists expect the Aussie economy to add around 30,000 new jobs in September, with the unemployment rate steady at 4.2% and the participation rate inching up to 66.9%.

In the US, the much-anticipated consumer price index (CPI) is scheduled on Wednesday ahead of the US Federal Reserve Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) policy meeting on October 28–29. Economists expect the headline and core CPI rates to increase by 0.3%–0.4% in the month of September. But the annual headline growth rate could accelerate to 3.1% from August’s 2.9% pace, with the annual core rate expected to be steady at 3.1%.

In Australian company news, the Bank of Queensland provides an earnings update on Wednesday. Third-quarter production updates are scheduled for Rio Tinto (Tuesday) and Santos (Thursday). CBA hosts an AGM on Wednesday. CommSec estimates about $1.6 billion worth of dividends will be paid to Aussie investors this week.

US third-quarter earnings results are due for:

• Tuesday: BlackRock, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Johnson & Johnson, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo
• Wednesday: Abbott Laboratories, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley
• Thursday: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
• Friday: Amex and SLB

Could Australia be safe(r) from Trump's latest tariff tantrum?

But here's a glimmer of hope for you at the start of the week: Australia could be better insulated from the global market turbulence this week. That's thanks to a mix of investor behaviour, commodity strength, and our unique trading position between China and the West.

After Trump’s April 10 tariff announcement, capital flooded into Australian equities as global investors sought refuge from the escalating trade tension. That surge helped lift blue-chip stocks such as CBA to record highs, reinforcing the view of the ASX as a relatively stable, dividend-rich market.

Beyond its financial sector, Australia’s resources industry is another key reason markets here could hold steady. The country is one of the world’s largest exporters of rare earth minerals, which are critical to everything from electric vehicles to military technology. These exports are increasingly attractive to U.S. manufacturers looking to diversify supply chains away from China, giving Australia a strategic advantage as the trade rift deepens.

Strap in, folks.

Australian teachers are more likely to be using artificial intelligence than their counterparts around the world, according to a recent international survey.

The OECD’s latest Teaching and Learning International Survey also shows Australian teachers are reporting high levels of stress and not enough training to manage student behaviour.

What is this survey? And what else does it tell us about Australian teachers?

What is the survey?

The Teaching and Learning Survey (also known as “TALIS”) is a large-scale survey of 280,000 teachers in 55 education systems around the world, including Australia.

Most of the teachers surveyed came from primary schools and lower secondary schools (typically up to Year 10 in Australia).

This is the fourth round of TALIS since it began in 2008 and the first since 2018.

Use of AI

Amid ongoing debate about the use of AI in education, many Australian teachers report they are using this emerging technology in their work.

About two thirds (66%) of lower secondary teachers reported using AI in the past year. This puts Australia as the fourth highest country within the OECD, and far above the OECD average of 36%.

Of Australian teachers who used AI, the most common purposes were brainstorming lesson plans and learning about and summarising content. This was happening for 71% of Australian teachers who used AI.

Australian teachers were unlikely to use AI to review data on student performance (9% of those who use AI, compared to 28% across the OECD) and to assess student work (15%, compared to 30% across the OECD).

These results suggest many Australian teachers are using AI to improve their approach to teaching. But their hesitancy to use it in certain situations suggests there is awareness of concerns around privacy (if student data is uploaded to large language models) and the need to keep using professional judgement (such as when assessing work).

Teacher stress

In Australia, these survey results also arrive at a time of continued concerns about teacher shortages, burnout and dissatisfaction.

Results show a marked increase in reported stress among Australian teachers, who reported the third highest levels of stress among all OECD countries, up from a ranking of 15th in 2018.

Among lower secondary teachers, Australia ranked highest among all countries where teachers reported experiencing stress frequently at work (34% in Australia compared to 19% across the OECD).

The top sources of stress were “too much administrative work,” “too much marking,” and “keeping up with curriculum changes”.

These results support research showing a drastic decrease in Australian teachers’ professional satisfaction since 2015, particularly in the first ten years of their careers.

Teacher education

In recent years, Australian policy makers have increasingly focused on teacher education programs – the university degrees that train teachers for the classroom. Following a 2023 report, teacher education programs are required to include topics such the brain and learning, teaching methods and classroom management.

Australian teachers in the TALIS survey appeared, on the whole, happy with their university education. Some 70% of respondents indicated that overall the quality of their teacher education was high, on par with 75% of teachers across the OECD.

While Australian teachers say their training provided sufficient curriculum knowledge, they were less positive about preparation for managing classroom behaviour.

According to my analysis of the survey data, approximately 50% of Australian teachers were positive about their behaviour training, compared to 63% across the OECD. This matches media reports of teachers struggling with poor student behaviour in their classrooms.

What now?

This survey provides high-quality data to understand our education system at a time of rapid change.

It suggests Australian teachers are global leaders in their use of AI. However, much work needs to be done to improve teachers’ wellbeing at work.

Sustaining the teaching profession and the quality of teachers’ work is a key national priority, more careful analysis of these results can help guide this work.

Robin Shields, Professor of Education and Head of School, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Sussan Ley’s challenge as opposition leader is to keep her party united and ready to govern in the event that the government loses public favour. That is, they need to be a ready alternative government.

Voters evaluate governments on the basis of what they’ve done, but also what they promise to do next. Opposition parties start on the back foot, as governments have greater public visibility and can use public money to ingratiate themselves with voters. Ley is particularly up against it, with only 51 members in her party room and little public confidence the party has any chance of winning the next federal election.

Inevitably though, the money runs dry or the government’s mistakes start to pile up. That’s when an opposition needs to be in a credible position to persuade swinging voters that they are a better option than the government. This broadly involves three stages: establishing competence, offering an alternative vision of government, and surviving the campaign.

Competence in opposition

The first stage – establishing competence – is where Ley and the Liberals now find themselves. Ley comes to the job with some question marks, having resigned as health minister in 2017 amid accusations of misusing publicly-funded travel.

On the plus side, her early moves to reinstitute formal policy development processes inside the party (including on “net zero” and nuclear energy) signal competence.

Former opposition leader Peter Dutton was competent in his own way, leading a defeated and fractious party room through a full parliamentary term with little public dissent and no serious challenges to his authority. However, this came at the expense of any real policy agenda, and that contributed to their defeat at the 2025 election.

The more difficult task is to combine competence and vision, and this is where we introduce Andrew Hastie.

Hastie, as a recent member of the shadow cabinet and now backbencher, is less concerned with establishing competence than with offering his own vision of a Liberal government. He attributed his decision to resign as shadow minister for home affairs to a lack of autonomy over the party’s immigration policy. He appears to have no patience for deliberative policy development processes. It has also been reported that Dutton accused Hastie of being “on strike” in the lead-up to the election.

Hastie’s position has been compared to that of Tony Abbott, but as opposition leader, Abbott was actually quite conciliatory.

Before the 2013 election, he committed to support the NDIS, Labor-led education reforms and the National Broadband Network. He offered stability and competence, particularly in contrast to six years of Labor in-fighting under Rudd and Gillard. His more conservative excesses (and awkward idiosyncrasies) came post-election.

Balancing competence and vision

Kevin Rudd – whom Abbott defeated in 2013 – offers the best recent example of an opposition leader successfully balancing competence with vision. It might be argued that Rudd’s “John Howard-lite” vision at the 2007 election was less ambitious than electorally strategic. Still, his political style differentiated him from Howard, whose government was 11 years old, fractious, and had little energy for new policy.

Before Rudd came Howard himself, who won government from Paul Keating and Labor in 1996 with a mix of competence and conservative vision. The Liberal Party had been in opposition for 13 years, lost an “unloseable” election in 1993, and rotated through a series of unpopular and gaffe-prone leaders.

Howard was awkward in front of a camera but respected by his colleagues. He successfully sold the electorate on his vision of nationalism, economic prudence, and blue-collar ambition.

Hastie seems in lockstep on the second part of Howard’s approach. His Instagram posts, public statements, and pre-parliamentary career in the military all point to a traditionally conservative vision.

Winning the campaign

Hastie’s criticism of Ley seems to boil down to her insistence on competence at the expense of vision. However, Ley’s deliberative processes might yet produce a platform that concords with Hastie’s personal vision. If so, she will have ticked “competence” and “vision” on the opposition leader checklist, and Hastie may have limited his career unnecessarily.

An alternative outcome is that Ley’s Liberal Party deliberates over the next year or so and agrees on a platform that is more moderate than Hastie (and fellow conservatives Jane Hume, Angus Taylor and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price) wants.

Hastie is wrong if he thinks winning from a centrist position is impossible, although it tends to require an incompetent government. Rudd defeated a moribund government whose two most senior figures openly despised each other. Abbott toppled Rudd in his second stint as prime minister after Rudd was deposed by and then deposed Julia Gillard. In the absence of a similar breakdown in Anthony Albanese’s Labor government, Hastie might be onto something.

In political science we call this valence politics. There are many issues on which all voters generally agree: everyone wants fewer wars, good quality education, affordable healthcare, for instance. Parties can differentiate themselves on their ability to tackle these valence issues, or they can propose an alternative vision.

By tacking to the centre, the Liberals will need to demonstrate that they are more competent than Albanese’s government. Choosing vision over competence – Hastie’s apparent preference – is not for the faint-hearted.

Jill Sheppard, Senior Lecturer, School of Politics and International Relations, Australian National University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

It’s gold rush time but no one’s packing it in, buying picks and shovels and heading for the goldfields, like they did in the 1800s in the USA and here in Bendigo, Ballarat and Bathurst, hoping to call out: “Eureka!” No, the gold chasers are in places like Martin Place Sydney where investors, speculators and scaredy cats are lining up outside the likes of ABC Bullion to add a bit of ‘secure’ glitter to their portfolio of assets.

Numbers-wise, gold was US$3,895 an ounce, which is record high territory. It’s up 44% in a year! And Tom Richardson from thenightly.com.au reports that the precious metal is now our third most valuable export. This is the biggest annual gain since 1979, which means it will help Treasurer Jim Chalmers to keep the budget deficit down, as mining exports like iron ore and now gold ultimately bring in unexpected tax revenue when their prices surge.

This chart below shows how the gold price has surged.

And it’s all understandable with the following happening:

1. An unusual US President who comes up with outside the square ideas like tariffs and his own rival for X (Twitter) called Truth Social. Then there’s immigration programs and a lot more than can unsettle financial markets.
2. The shutdown of the US government with 740,000 employees on furlough, which can slow down the growth of the US economy.
3. A war between Russia and Ukraine, with some action creeping into Poland.
4. Gaza, a peace deal and an Israel more aggressive than ever before.
5. Central banks are buying gold as Trump, the surging US stock market driven by AI and other factors make the US dollar look less stable for conservative central bankers. In the past three years, central banks have bought 1,000 tonnes of gold, which is huge, given the 400-500 tonnes they bought over the preceding 10 years!
6. High inflation always helps gold prices spike, which was the key issue from 2022 and 2024.
7. The Trump administration wants and is getting a lower US dollar to stimulate growth and help reduce its budget deficit.
8. A US stock market at all-time highs eventually will sell-off or crash, and gold is a safe haven play.
9. Term deposit rates are falling and are now less attractive for investors wanting safety or defensive assets.
10. China and other Asian economies are growing wealthier. These cultures simply love gold!

Jordan Eliseo, general manager at ABC Bullion, told Richardson that “2025’s buying frenzy has turned even hotter over the last month as lunchtime line-ups grow longer, [and] in total, Mr Eliseo estimated customer demand for storage in September had almost tripled on the past 12 months’ rolling average.”

Yep, you can buy and get it stored at places like ABC Bullion. And this comes at a time when well-known US fund managers, such as Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio, say the times are like the 1970s. Dalio thinks portfolios could easily have 15% exposure to gold! That looks over-the-top! You can bet Ray’s funds hold gold, so his endorsement has to be treated with a degree of conservatism, but I must confess as a defensive asset gold is looking more appealing as interest rates fall.

That said, I hate buying any assets at all-time highs because you fear that the market corrects just as you get in. On the other hand, I can’t see many of the 10 issues driving gold prices change all that much to send gold prices plummeting.

For my financial planning clients, I’ve put them into ETFs that hold great gold miners such as Northern Star and Evolution Mining, which give them exposure to the rising price of gold.

I prefer diversified plays. Something like EX20 is up over 15% year-to-date, while funds like WQG are up 20.94% over the year! Meanwhile, Vinva Australian Equity Fund was up close to 30% over the past year and is up 15.98% since inception.

Other funds have also competed well against gold and gold companies, so I wouldn’t get too over-the-top mad on the gold bar. I reckon a 5% holding is a great idea, but I would’ve preferred to run this story when the old price was a lot lower. Why? Well, I can never easily forget the advice of that great investor, Warren Buffett who once advised us: “Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.”

The controversial “Super Tax” on balances over $3 million, a centrepiece of the Albanese government’s superannuation reforms, is now officially under the Treasury microscope, it has confirmed.

The new admission came at a Senate Estimates hearing last night, after months of growing criticism from industry groups and, more recently, from within the government’s own ranks.

In a key development, Diane Brown, deputy secretary of the Treasury’s revenue division, told senators that the Prime Minister’s Office is now directly engaged with the legislation, which was previously under Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ control. Brown said, “There have been some conversations with the prime minister’s office… It remains unlegislated, and so stakeholders continue to raise questions about the bill”, as reported by the AFR this morning.

Pressed on the substance of these conversations, Brown declined to offer details, citing the need to protect her ability to advise the government. But she confirmed that Treasury has been modelling different outcomes in response to “concessions and concerns that stakeholders have raised,” and has provided this advice to the Treasurer.

The Australian Financial Review reports that concerns about fairness, complexity, and unintended consequences continue to shape behind-the-scenes discussions, with the possibility of amendments or delays now firmly on the table.

How did we get here?

The government announced its super tax plan in 2023: a 15% surcharge on earnings from super balances above $3 million, effectively doubling the tax rate on the wealthiest accounts. Framed as a question of fairness, the change would affect less than half a percent of members, or about 80,000 people.

But controversy exploded over one feature: taxing unrealised gains. This means super members could face tax bills on “paper profits” – even if they hadn’t sold assets or received cash – a move critics call a radical departure from longstanding Australian tax principles.

Three issues have dominated the pushback. First, liquidity: members could be taxed on gains they can’t access as cash, like rising property values. Second, compliance: funds would face costly and complex annual revaluations across everything from shares to farmland. Third, bracket creep: the $3 million threshold is not indexed, meaning inflation will steadily catch more Australians in the tax net over time.

Industry groups, legal experts, and backbenchers alike have all raised these red flags, arguing that the policy as drafted risks being unworkable and unfair. At the same time, public polling suggests most Australians support cracking down on ultra-large super balances, putting political pressure on both sides of the debate.

What might change?

With the Prime Minister’s office now involved and Treasury officials actively modelling alternatives, several options could be considered if the government decides to amend the policy:

• Only taxing realised gains: Restricting the surcharge to profits actually received on sale would ease liquidity risks but might reduce revenue and incentivise hoarding.

• Deeming rates: Applying a notional rate of return could simplify compliance, but setting the right rate would be contentious.

• Indexation: Tying the $3 million cap to inflation or wages would avoid bracket creep, but doesn’t address the core controversy of taxing unrealised gains.

• Hard caps: Forcing balances above the threshold out of super would be simple but politically fraught.

A hybrid model – indexing the threshold and switching to deemed or realised gains – is also in play.

Beyond the technicalities, the super tax debate goes to the heart of what superannuation is for: providing a dignified retirement, not tax-free inheritance. But constant tinkering, especially on the fly, can erode trust in the system and the government’s ability to deliver coherent long-term policy.