Firms are posting roles but not rewarding people for filling them

Good morning AusCorp. 13% of corporate professionals report some form of clawback or minimum return obligation attached to their parental leave.

In this week's edition, we cover EY’s decision to claw back parental leave payments, what the budget actually means now that the numbers are out, and why firms are posting roles but not rewarding people for filling them.

Plus Optiver paid its Australian staff $1.4 million each on average, the government just raised the cost of leaving the country by $10 and if you’re in Melbourne next week, we’re giving away several thousand iced matcha lattes.

AUSCORP STRESS INDEX

Markets whipsawed through budget uncertainty last week, followed by a bank sell-off in the sharemarket and oil price shocks, and by Friday, the volatility had largely settled down. Your super balance took a small hit last week but the professional market remained relatively unchanged. SEEK postings recovered week-on-week, redundancy coverage is still circulating, hiring freezes are still being discussed, and the cohort enrolling in MBAs to make themselves harder to cut is growing. The job market will absorb you if you move, but it will not reward you for moving. Salary leverage is thin right now, and employers know it.

THE BIG CONVERSATION

Vesting parental leave payouts anyone?

EY Australia made headlines last week for requiring staff to repay 2 months of parental leave top-up if they resign within a year of returning. Everyone lost their minds but our own parental leave benchmarking data suggests EY is less of an outlier than the coverage implies.

Around 13% of corporate professionals we surveyed in our 2026 Parental Leave Survey reported some form of clawback or minimum return obligation attached to their parental leave. That number concentrates heavily in professional services, law and consulting, where 29% reported an obligation.

That's more than 3 times the rate seen in financial services and more than 4 times the rate in tech. Government reported zero. The firms populating the strictest category, requiring both a minimum return period and repayment if you do not meet it, are almost exclusively legal and consulting practices.

What the data also shows is that the clean repayment clause is not actually the most common mechanism. Several firms withhold a portion of the leave payment entirely and drip it out only once the employee returns. This is then framed internally as an incentive, experienced by employees as vesting parental leave.

Clawback terms tend to live in policy documents rather than conversations (and yes, it is completely legal), which means a significant portion of the workforce is making decisions about leave without the full picture.

PICK & SCROLL BY THE AUSSIE CORPORATE

Flat White lands every week. The news doesn't. While you were looking forward to the weekend, Optiver paid their staff $1.4M each on average and household spending fell 1.2%.

If you missed any of that, we’ll keep you in the loop even if you live under a rock.

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.

TOP PICKS FROM LAST WEEK

• KPMG has admitted a senior audit partner used confidential Lendlease board documents while pitching for a major Westpac contract. LINK 

• Australian household spending has fallen 1.2% in April as Commonwealth Bank data shows a sharp pullback in petrol and recreation outlays, while hospitality spending has risen 6.2% annually. LINK

• Optiver Australia has paid its 443 employees an average of about $1.42M each as employee benefits expenses reached $629.9M and post-employment benefits totalled $50M. LINK

• Westpac chief executive Anthony Miller said the bank is seeing tangible outcomes from AI use as it grapples with disclosing costly token consumption and productivity impacts. LINK

• The Australian government has lifted the passenger movement charge from $70 to $80 from 1 January 2027, aiming to raise an extra $755M over 5 years as tourism bodies warn it will hurt competitiveness. LINK

THE INSIDE TRACK

TOGETHER WITH KRAKEN

Your savings account has been doing the same thing it always does while everything else around it moves. You don't need to go all in on crypto. You just need to stop pretending it's not worth understanding.

Kraken has been around since 2011, never been hacked, and lets you start with AUD from any amount. If you've been waiting for someone to explain it without the hype, start here.

THREAD OF THE WEEK - r/AUSCORP

Offshoring of Jobs - why is no one concerned?

“There are so many instances of major corporations offshoring jobs to India, Vietnam, Phillipines, US etc etc. in customer services, IT services and support, important leadership/management positions etc etc.

I know there is a cost factor behind the decision. However, this cannot be good for us in the long term. Isn’t anyone concerned about data security, quality of services, talent development and retention in Australia, loss of future economic strengths and potentials?”

Offshoring is legal, largely unregulated in Australia, and companies are under no obligation to prioritise local employment over shareholder returns. If you want leverage, build skills that are harder to replicate remotely or shift offshore, because Reddit is right - corporations only respond to friction, and right now there is almost none.

Read the thread →

THE ECONOMIC SCOOP

The budget was sold as the most restrained in nearly a decade. The problem is almost none of the hard work starts before 2028, and the relief you're getting now will expire.

Of the $44.9B improvement projected over 5 years, $36.6B comes from the economy doing better on its own - higher prices, stronger wages and migration resulting in more taxes paid. The government's actual decisions account for just $8.2B of that. The single biggest saving is $37.8 billion from slowing down the growth of the NDIS from 10% to 2%.

The housing changes are the most immediate. Restricting negative gearing on existing properties from July 2027 is expected to pull some investors out of the market, and Treasury modelling suggests prices could dip around 2% temporarily. But investors who already own keep the old rules, so they have little reason to sell. Supply tightens, demand from 295,000 net migration arrivals stays elevated, and rents are expected to rise - showing up in your cost of living with up to a 9-month delay.

So what do you actually get now? Petrol excise halved, expiring in July. A $1,000 instant tax deduction worth about $205 for most workers. The bigger tax cut of $250 a year doesn't arrive until 2027. The relief is small and temporary. The structural pressure lands later, when your rate cycle hasn't finished and your rent has already gone up.

OFF THE CLOCK

EATING
Tokyo pizza, a thousand reservations, good luck

Studio Tamaki has arrived in Sydney and securing a table is already shaping up as a more competitive exercise than most performance reviews. LINK

WATCHING
Top End Wedding is back, eight parts

Prime Video is following up the beloved Australian film with a full series, which means more Kakadu, more family chaos and a very reasonable excuse to do nothing on a Sunday. LINK

READING
10 books worth your commute this May

The Australian has done the shortlisting so you don't have to spend twenty minutes in a bookshop pretending you've heard of things. LINK

WEARING
These $50 chinos will replace your office pants

Typically, chinos are made with a lightweight cotton blend to create a more comfortable wear for men but the days of 100% cotton chinos are far behind us. LINK

GOING
Foot Locker turns Wynyard Tunnel into a run

Foot Locker has converted the Wynyard Tunnel into a neon running experience, which is either a genuinely fun use of Sydney's under-utilised infrastructure or the most elaborate shoe advertisement ever staged. LINK

AUSCORP EVENTS

SPORTS
The Aussie Corporate x Kraken x Sneaker Laundry | Melbourne | Free Matcha
Thursday 28th May 7AM

• Morning Run + Free Matcha HERE

• No, I don’t want to run, I just want free matcha HERE

SPORTS
AusCorp Pickleball After Hours | Sydney | Catering & Paddles Included
Tuesday 2nd June 5:30PM-7:30PM | SOLD OUT | WAITLIST HERE

SPORTS / SOCIAL
AusCorp Singles Event | 👀 Coming Soon
Early July

ODD PICKS FROM LAST WEEK

• 5 of the best exercises you can ever do, according to Harvard. LINK 

• Always eat these 7 fruits and veggies with the skin on. LINK 

• This air conditioning strategy is the sweet spot for saving energy and money. LINK 

• Spotify is celebrating its 20th anniversary by giving listeners a fully personalised look at their entire music history. LINK 

• Fox Sports is going to pay someone $50,000 to watch every game of the Football World Cup live from an office in Times Square. LINK 

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