1. Last night’s promise from Labor’s leader Anthony Albanese gives all families access to childcare at 10% of the total cost! Doctors, lawyers, tech-entrepreneurs and investment bankers — everyone with a job who wants childcare will only have to pay 10 cents in the dollar. Labor says the Government’s Budget was anti-women and the current recession is a ‘pink recession’ meaning women have lost more than men because of the wider implications of the Coronavirus.

2. Business confidence in NZ has risen back to the levels seen prior to the outbreak of COVID-19. The ANZBO measure of business confidence rose to minus 14.5 in October from minus 28.5 in September. This shows how important a vaccine will be to bring normalcy back to an economy.

3. President Trump has pulled out of a scheduled ‘virtual debate’ while Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and House Speaker Pelosi continue to debate the potential shape of a government stimulus package. However Wall Street was negative on Pelosi refusing to support a special stimulus package to prop up the airline industry, which President Trump put forward.

4. With the AFL season getting into finals, we’ll soon hear who wins the Brownlow Medal. Cricket great, Kerry O’Keefe, last night told The Back Page TV programme on Fox that Brisbane’s Lachie Neale is $1.25 favourite to win. And he threw in this screamingly funny fact saying that if Neale wins, it will be the eighth Brownlow Medal winner in a row from a town that doesn’t even have a McDonald’s! It might say something about the greatness of country air or the value of less access to junk food. Either way, it’s a funny fact.

5. The Dow Jones was up 122.05 points or 0.43% to 28,425.51, the S&P 500 gained 27.38 points or 0.80% to 3,446.83 and the Nasdaq rose 35.38 points or 0.50% to 11,420.98.