Good morning AusCorp. Have you noticed your team getting worse at thinking? How confident are you about your own? In this week's edition, we talk about the cognitive decline we’re seeing due to AI, especially amongst senior leadership and those poor juniors everywhere.
We've also gone deep on the 900,000 Australians now taking Ozempic and what it's doing to their grocery baskets, their wardrobes and their bar tabs, plus the black market peptides that are “better”.
Victoria is about to legislate two days a week of working from home, Australian 15-year-olds have slipped more than two years behind where they were in 2003, and one CEO told an all-hands he never wants to hear about flexible work again.
THE BIG CONVERSATION
"Did you run it through Copilot?"
The top-down message from every leader in Australia at the moment is to increase your usage of AI. Most companies have written it into performance objectives but now everyone’s trying to find a way to use it without realising there’s an acceptable way to be using AI.
People are using it to send Teams messages, basic emails and trusting Claude presentations like they have lots of substance. The time efficiency that these people think they save just gets undone (as does their credibility) by the one person in the sprint or team who actually knows what's going on and has to redo everything. Worse is when someone puts together a decent strategy and it gets destroyed because Copilot didn’t approve it or the executive asks AI to "tell me what a CMO would do" and then proceeds to forward the entire output down the line.
We don't think it's fair to blame AI. It comes down to people not prompting properly, not factoring in context, and asking Copilot to draft a reply, then hitting send without checking. We all know that half of what corporate Australia produced before AI came about was already slop. The difference now is that everyone knows immediately if you're that person. Getting rid of em-dashes from your email just isn’t enough anymore. And if you aren’t checking your work or understanding what you’re signing off on, it just tells everyone that you’re AI incompetent.
The people who use it well, with proper context and a real read of consequences, are ahead of the game. They know which work can be automated and spend the time saved on things that matter. Excluding the handful of executives who now use AI as a crutch for incompetence, you could argue that a seasoned executive basing decision-making on Claude has years of industry experience to recognise whether the output is substantial enough to act on. But for juniors, that boring work was how all of us learned to tell what good looks like.
We all know that AI is inevitable. So while we try to limit our own cognitive decline, help out your colleagues as well. Ask them what they think before you ask them to run it through Copilot. It’s all giving the same energy as the AI posters in every second restaurant window. Nobody says anything but everyone notices.
PICK & SCROLL BY THE AUSSIE CORPORATE | LAST WEEK'S TOP PICKS
AI has read 400,000 Reddit posts about Ozempic and surfaced side effects that were not making it into the official safety data. LINK
Australian 15-year-olds have come out of the latest global school test more than 2 years of learning behind the ones who sat it in 2003, dropping to 16th in maths out of 91 countries. LINK
Victoria will legislate a two-day-per-week work-from-home - the laws will pass the upper house Thursday and cannot be unwound by an incoming Coalition government after the November election. LINK
Temporary graduate visa holders have jumped 170% in 3 years, with that cohort now growing faster than the student visa cohort as the post-pandemic international student surge shifts into a permanent migration pathway. LINK
Flat White lands every week. The news doesn't. Every weekday morning at 8:00am, we send you everything that happened across Australian business and corporate news in a 2-minute read. Same team. Same voice. Just daily.
THE INSIDE TRACK
THREAD OF THE WEEK - r/AUSCORP
CEO's reaction to flexible work survey results - are other companies seeing this regression?
We recently had an all-hands where leadership shared results from an anonymous staff survey.
A massive recurring theme across the board was employees asking for better or clearer hybrid/flexible work options.
When the CEO addressed it live, they(1 person) firmly shut down the conversation, saying words to the effect of: "I'm sick of people asking about flexible work, I'm not doing any more and I don't want to hear about it again."
Needless to say, the chatter in the room and online went dead silent.
My suspicion from my own experience is that CEOs and top management are in a people centric role where it's more important to assess the vibe of a team, have meetings, do the politics etc. but their employees who physically do the desk work need the space and lack of distractions to get stuff done. So there is a conflict of interests in terms of how different roles suit different working conditions. Bosses are usually well paid too and can afford a stay at home wife or nanny. Us workers who have kids need the flexibility so much more. Just my 2 cents.
Top Comment
THE BRAINS TRUST
Roughly 900,000 Australians are now taking GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic or Wegovy, and many are paying up to $600 a month out of pocket to do it. Jarden puts total annual spend above $4B, up 70% year-on-year. It's a consumer category that didn't exist at scale three years ago.
Monthly trends in GLP-1 RA medicines accessed in Australia, May 2020 – April 2025. (a) PBS-subsidised access; (b) Estimated private access. Data Source: IQVIA Solutions Australia and PBS dispensing claims
EY-Parthenon modelling suggests more than 7 million Australian adults could be using these drugs by 2036, with eating less but more deliberately, moving toward protein and fresh food and away from snacks, sugary drinks and processed categories. Two-thirds of users say they're more motivated to refresh their wardrobe and 57% are spending more on clothes, while 53% have upped their focus on skincare and grooming. Rabobank's research also found that households with at least one user cut grocery spending by 6% within 6 months of starting.
Right now Ozempic only gets the government subsidy if you have type 2 diabetes, which brings it down to about $32 a script. Everyone using it to lose weight is paying the full $350 to $500 a month out of their own pocket. That's starting to change, with the government agreeing to subsidise Wegovy for people who've had a heart attack or stroke, or whose BMI is over 35. It's a narrow group to begin with, but it’s only the start.
Monthly trends in PBS-subsidised and private access to GLP-1 RA medicines in Australia, May 2020 – April 2025. (a) Number of units; (b) Proportion of total estimated access. Data Source: IQVIA Solutions Australia and PBS dispensing claims
None of those numbers count the black market version of Ozempic, better known to most people as peptides. The TGA made illegal peptides a compliance priority for 2026 after what it called exponential growth in imports, and the ABC recently found injectables shipped from China being sold on Facebook Marketplace as "unopened gym supplements". Researchers say more Australians are ending up in hospital from them, and buyers have no reliable way of knowing what's actually in the vial. Whatever the official adoption figure is, the protein craze isn’t over.
OFF THE CLOCK
WATCHING
Everything Apple announced at its fall iPhone event
The main event was the tech giant’s highly anticipated first foldable phone, the iPhone Duo. Apple also announced its iPhone 18 Pro lineup, along with new AirPods, and more. LINK
EATING
Lunch for $20 and under? Seven new Sydney spots will sort you out
Seven new Sydney spots are serving filling lunches for $20 or less, from steak sandwiches and smashburgers to rice bowls and Thai pancakes. LINK
GOING
Candlelight concerts in Sydney transform iconic local venues with thousands of flickering lights
From the Gothic Revival character of St. Stephen’s Uniting Church - with its lofty stone arches and stained-glass windows - to the Sydney Masonic Centre’s striking Brutalist design and impressive main hall, each location adds a distinct dimension to the experience. LINK
READING
15 books real people say completely changed the way they see the world
A lot of books claim to be life-changing, profound, or inspirational. In reality, many of them go in one ear and out the other. LINK
WEARING
12 pairs of baggy denim jeans to shop in 2026
Denim trends change constantly, making it tricky to find jeans that will stay stylish beyond one season. LINK
AUSCORP EVENTS
AusCorp Puppy Yoga x Doga Sydney event
AusCorp Runs | Sydney | Coming Soon 👀
AusCorp Singles Event | Sydney | Coming Soon 👀
ODD PICKS FROM LAST WEEK
Is it okay to clean your pet's bed in the same machine as your clothes ? LINK
A landmark Australian study has found brain disease CTE in 31 of 51 donated brains from former rugby league players. LINK
Why do we trust chatbots and how can we use them more wisely? LINK
OpenAI has used around 10,000 AI agents to find and formally verify a blowup solution to the forced Navier–Stokes problem. LINK
FEEDBACK LOOP | SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS
If you have want to provide more detailed feedback or have any topics that you want to hear more about, you can let us know HERE.
