🟠 School's out for teachers?

Also including: The dramatic arrest of alleged car thieves in Melbourne's east last week.

Author

Matthew Sims
March 06, 2026

⏱️ The 117th edition of our newsletter is a seven-minute read.

Hi there 👋 

Matthew Sims here, your reporter at the Eastern Melburnian.

🇮🇷 Unfortunately, the turmoil in the Middle East shows no sign of stopping any time soon. For those with loved ones stranded in a country with its airspace closed, it must be a nerve-wracking wait for some positive news. Indeed, the first flights are on their way from the United Arab Emirates to Australia.

✈️ I called around to a number of local travel agencies this week to have a chat about how it’s impacting their business and the level of disruption it has caused to those wanting to travel into — or via — the region.

  • I spoke with a consultant from Doncaster-based travel agent Persia Travel, who told me their business had shifted from booking new flights to cancelling, refunding or rescheduling trips.

If you have any stories you wish to share about your connection to the conflict, please reach out to us at [email protected]

Today we’re covering:

  • How local travel agencies are dealing with the ongoing fallout from the US attack on Iran;

  • A look into the Australian Education Union push to trial a four-day work week for Victoria’s teachers; and

  • The dramatic arrest of alleged car thieves in Melbourne’s east last Friday.

“We need to find out why people are moving out of this career and why are we losing people with a depth of experience and knowledge to other industries.”

Local primary school teacher Elise Walker proposed introducing one day a week for students to learn online and at-home.

WHAT’S ON 🎟️

📰 THIS WEEK’S HEADLINES

Almost 200,000 passengers pass through Dubai International Airport every day, so it’s no surprise the ripples from the war in the Middle East – which has led to airport closures in key transit destinations such as Dubai and Abu Dhabi – have reached Doncaster-based travel agent Persia Travel.

Persia Travel consultant Viuna said they have been constantly dealing with issues since the fighting began.

Passengers with pre-booked flights to the Middle East – or looking to transit through the region enroute to Europe – have been the most impacted.

“We’ve had to cancel or refund all of our passenger’s tickets or reschedule,” Viuna told the Eastern Melburnian. “Most of the people, they don't understand it's out of our control. We don't know what's going to happen.”

Viuna said about 80 percent of their customers travel to Iran or Middle Eastern countries, meaning their business had been “basically shut down” by the conflict.

“There are lots of our passengers that are stuck in Iran, or they've been traveling from Australia to Iran, but they are stuck in layover places such as Doha,” said Viuna. “It’s really hard to communicate with airlines right now because they are busy as well.”

Viuna said they had no way of contacting people trying to flee Iran, but those they had been able to contact were “worried and terrified”.

“We cannot tell them if their flight is happening or not, if they have a schedule change – nothing, no ways of communicating,” said Viuna. “We’re just going to have to wait and see what's going to happen.”

Federal Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong appeared on the Today Show on Thursday and said the government was working to get Australians on flights home.

“The first thing we have to think about is how do we keep Australians safe and secure,” Wong said. “We are deploying additional foreign affairs personnel to the region to help…The best way to get people home, the fastest way, is for commercial flights to restart.”

In a bid to attract new teachers and retain current staff, the Australian Education Union’s Victorian branch has proposed trialling a four-day work week for state school teachers.

However, a local teacher in Melbourne’s south-east says the move could worsen the stress placed on educators.

What happened: Last month, the AEU Victorian branch called for a trial of a four-day work week to look at the viability of having teachers work remotely for one day per week.

Currently, students are in class 9am to 3pm Monday to Friday, with teachers also required to work at the school for 38 hours per week.

Under the proposal, each teacher’s timetable would be grouped together to have four days of direct teaching and a fifth day allocated towards lesson planning, professional collaboration and administrative work to be done from home.

Different teachers would take different planning days, meaning schools would remain fully staffed for students throughout the week.

AEU Victorian branch president Justin Mullaly said a trial of the proposed model would allow the sector to see if it could work.

“We want to do this because we’ve got a chronic shortage of staff in our schools,” Mullaly told 9 News.

New laws formally announced earlier this week by the State Government would give workers who can work remotely the right to work two days from home. However, this would not apply to teachers.

In conjunction with the Australian Education Union’s Victorian branch, Monash University conducted a survey of more than 8,000 Victorian state school teachers, with 65 percent supporting the idea that a four-day week model would support high-quality education.

Elise Walker, a single mother of three and a teacher working in a State Government primary school in the south-eastern suburbs, said the “sensory overload” of teaching four days straight and then pushing all non-contact time to one day would be “more debilitating and more exhausting” than the current model, especially after being diagnosed with ADHD a couple of years ago.

“It would break me,” Walker told the Eastern Melburnian. “I don't think it’s a terribly inclusive model for teachers.”

A dramatic arrest involving the Air Wing and Dog Squad units unfolded near Glen Waverley late last week.

A Dog Squad unit first spotted an allegedly stolen Toyota Hilux on Ferntree Gully Road in Glen Waverley about 9pm last Friday, with an Air Wing unit then observing the vehicle entering a carpark at the Mount Waverley train station.

Officers on the ground used stop sticks to puncture all four tyres, but the driver continued to flee with the car eventually coming to a stop on Doncaster Road and the two occupants attempting to flee.

Police arrested the two 36-year-old Cranbourne men moments later without incident, later charging the pair with a range of offences, including theft of a motor vehicle and possessing methylamphetamine and other traffic-related offences.

Watch the video below.

Instagram Post

SEEN THIS WEEK

🤖 Can we protect our water and electricity from the data centre boom?

The National Account reporter Archie Milligan recently spoke to Alexander Hoysted, who helped bring together an alliance of unions, environment, community and renewable energy industry organisations to call for new data centres to be powered by 100 percent new build renewables.

The proposal is now on the desks of two government ministers.

Check out the full interview below.

Thanks for catching up with us this week at the Eastern Melburnian. We hope you enjoyed this issue.

Cheers,

Matthew