1. Jobs summit kicks of today
With the Jobs and Skills Summit starting today in Canberra, bosses and unions have agreed to make wage agreements easier to make. Employers were afraid a new Labor Government would mean they would side with unions to maintain the toughness of the test of any new wage agreement, called the Better Off Overall Test or the BOOT test. Instead, unions and the Business Council have agreed to soften the test to make wage deals simpler, fairer and more accessible. Plus, both sides agreed to support an increase in migration to help businesses access workers.

2. 4 super funds close
Four super funds have failed their investing returns test and they will have to close. And they will have to send their members to other more successful funds. The four in question are Australian Catholic Superannuation fund*, Westpac’s BT Super MySuper fund, Energy Industries Superannuation Scheme and AMG Super. Anyone looking for a new fund should check out the super monitoring website Superratings.com.au.

3. Will Twiggy Forrest buy David Jones?
Iron ore mining magnate Andrew Twiggy Forrest, is eyeing off retailer David Jones. DJ’s and Country Road are owned by the South African retailer, Woolworths, which has nothing to do with our own Woolies. The South Africans have been toying with selling the iconic Aussie retailer for some time and now the founder of Fortescue Metals, Twiggy Forrest is running his eye over the business. He also owns bootmaker, R.M.Williams. DJs sold for $2.1 billion eight years ago.

4. Albanese announced major changes to Covid-19 rules after National Cabinet
The mandatory Covid isolation period has been reduced from seven days to five days, and masks will no longer be required on domestic flights.

5. ASX to slide
ASX futures were down 72 points or 1.04% to 6836 near 6.40am AEST, with the AUD +0.06% to 69.01 US cents.

On Wall St: Dow -0.9% S&P 500 -0.8% Nasdaq -0.6%.

In New York: BHP -0.9% RIO -0.9% Atlassian -1.5%.

Tesla -0.8% Apple -1.1% Amazon -1.5% Netflix +1.3%

*Australian Catholic Superannuation (ACS) acknowledges that our default product has not met the benchmarks set by APRA, which evaluated the performance of superannuation default products over the eight years to 30 June 2022.
The planned merger between ACS and UniSuper continues to progress and is currently on track to be completed by the end of 2022