Nobody is going to tell you

Good morning AusCorp. Someone in your office smells and everyone knows it except them. Do you tell them or just wait for the all-staff email to go around in a few weeks and hope they notice?

Elsewhere this week, jet fuel is up more than 40% since February and airlines are already passing it on, but the Aussie dollar is sitting at five-year highs against the yen and the rupee, so you might want to rethink where you’re travelling.

In other news, work from home just became a formal right for clerks and admin staff under a new award clause, Canva's valuation dropped from US$40 billion to US$31 billion in a month, and household bills from gas to groceries are running well ahead of headline inflation.

THE BIG CONVERSATION

Nobody is going to tell you.

Someone in your office smells but everyone is too scared to say anything. Nobody wants to be the person who made it about someone's hygiene, in case it sounds like you’re picking on their weight, their culture, their income, or whatever's actually behind it. Most of the time, nothing ends up getting said, and this also means if you've ever wondered whether it's you that smells, you can’t trust that everyone’s silence actually means you don’t.

When it does get escalated however, it's rarely raised with the person at fault. It goes to a manager, then to HR, and comes back as an all-staff email about hygiene standards or a laminated sign about microwave etiquette. Body odour is usually a symptom, a health problem, a housing problem, or even a post-gym issue. Complaints sit for months because nobody wants to be the person who made it a discrimination matter by targeting that one specific individual.

Overusing perfume and aftershave is just as bad because most guilty people are wearing it because they're being considerate. Asthma and allergies are medical and documented, and fragrance-free zones turn up in office floorplans because of this. Nobody is getting a BO-free zone. Tell someone off for spraying deodorant at their desk and there's a fair chance they stop wearing it entirely and we’re back at square one.

Hot-desking makes it worse. Three days on site with no assigned seat means you can end up next to the problem on a random Tuesday, with no history and no relationship to fall back on. So even if you don’t know the person sitting next to you, the one thing worse than saying nothing is saying it to everyone except the person it's about. If the roles were reversed, you'd want to know. So tell them, kindly and directly, before it turns into office gossip.

PICK & SCROLL BY THE AUSSIE CORPORATE | LAST WEEK'S TOP PICKS

• The Fair Work Commission has backed a new model clause in the Clerks Award giving office-based administrative workers a formal right to request work from home while rejecting mandatory employer acceptance. LINK

• Canva slashed its internal valuation from US$40B to US$31B this month after artificial intelligence flipped the economics of its free tier. LINK

• Household gas prices are up 48% since mid-2021 and electricity has jumped 38% both well ahead of headline inflation of 24% over the same period. Insurance costs have climbed nearly 50%, cooking oils and fats are up 47%, milk costs 35% more, the price of a new home has surged 44%, and council rates and rents are up 26%. LINK

• The tax office is chasing investment property owners who sold between July 2020 and June 2025 but failed to lodge a tax return disclosing the sale. LINK

• Macquarie Group has scrapped plans to appoint KPMG as auditor and will retain PwC instead after parliamentary scrutiny of KPMG’s audit practice over a whistleblower client data scandal. 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

Has anyone actually benefitted from telling a coworker what they earn?

We’re always told not to discuss salary at work, which seems incredibly convenient for employers.

I'm curious about the people who ignored that.

Have you ever compared salaries with someone doing roughly the same job and discovered something outrageous? And what happened afterwards?

Did you negotiate a raise, leave, cause absolute chaos, or just spend the next six months silently furious every time Steve went to lunch?

Read More

THE BRAINS TRUST

Getting on the plane is getting more expensive. Jet fuel was more than 40% dearer in early June than in mid-February, and the gap between crude oil and jet fuel widened 64% over the same stretch. IATA estimates airlines will collectively pay $100 billion more for fuel this year than last, Qantas has flagged up to $800 million in extra fuel costs alone, and Virgin has already lifted domestic fares by roughly 5%.

Even with increased prices, it’s not slowing anyone down yet. Australians took more than 12.5 million overseas trips in the year to December 2025, and Flight Centre's July leisure sales came in above pre-Covid peak levels, its strongest July since 2015.

The dollar is doing the opposite of the ticket price. It's buying just under 71 US cents this year against an average of 64 cents through 2025, and it's sitting at five-year highs against the yen and the rupee. So the flight costs more and the fortnight on the ground costs less. Who wins, depend on where you're headed. Intrepid's bookings to Korea are up 71% and to China up 131% since March, while destinations in Southeast Asia are wearing the fare rise with none of the currency upside.

Middle East airspace closures explain most of the pain. They pulled around $60 million out of Flight Centre's earnings in three months and left the company with record turnover on 4% less profit, while its corporate travel arm posted records of its own. The routes that took the hit were any of the flights that run through the region. Travellers haven’t stopped flying, they’ve just started flying somewhere else.

OFF THE CLOCK

GOING
Sydney Harbour's sauna uses the ocean

Wood-fired heat, cold plunge straight into the harbour, and the waiting list is going to be long by Monday morning. LINK

EATING
Marrickville's noodle house worth the detour

Duan Noodle House is doing hand-pulled biang biang and 72-hour pho with the kind of technical obsession you can actually hear through the wall. LINK

WATCHING
Streaming's brutal new economics, one cancellation at a time

Not Suitable For Work got axed fast enough to suggest that prestige and goodwill count for very little when the numbers don't move. LINK

READING
On-call anxiety is ruining your sleep

Research confirms the phone doesn't need to ring to cost you a night's rest, which will surprise no one who has ever been on a client escalation roster. LINK

WEARING
High-vis, but make it pub-appropriate

UP THERE and ASICS have turned safety orange into a sneaker that reads as deliberate rather than accidental, which is a harder thing to pull off than it sounds. LINK

AUSCORP EVENTS

• AusCorp Runs | Sydney | Coming Soon 👀 

• AusCorp Singles Event | Sydney | Coming Soon 👀 

ODD PICKS FROM LAST WEEK

• How much creatine should you take daily for optimal muscle growth? LINK

• ADHD in women: Breaking the stereotypes. LINK

• How did a kitten born with 29 toes break a world record? LINK

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