Good morning, this is Helen Sullivan bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Tuesday 4 February.
Top stories
Barnaby Joyce will challenge Michael McCormack for the leadership of the Nationals when a party room spill is called on Tuesday, saying he has learned from his past mistakes and is the best person to lead the party to the next election. The former leader’s tilt at a comeback won support from the cabinet minister Matt Canavan on Monday night, with the Queensland senator resigning his position to back Joyce in the leadership ballot. Joyce phoned McCormack on Monday afternoon to inform him that there would be a spill of the leader’s position when MPs meet in Canberra for the first day of the parliamentary year, saying “We have to speak with our own voice, we have to drive agendas.”
US House impeachment managers made impassioned closing arguments before the Senate on Monday, urging it to hold the president to account. Almost every Republican in the audience held fast behind Donald Trump. Led by intelligence committee chairman Adam Schiff, the managers pleaded with Republicans to find Trump guilty of the charges in the two articles of impeachment: abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. A mostly party-line vote on Friday not to call witnesses in the trial signalled a lack of interest on the Republican side. Trump maintains his conduct has been irreproachable, and all but a handful of the 53 senators in the majority have seamlessly agreed. Follow the latest on our liveblog.
Chinese state media reported 57 new coronavirus deaths on Monday, all but one in Wuhan, as the first Australians evacuated from the epicentre of the virus touched down on Christmas Island. Seventy-two people were on board the first of four charter flights expected to take more than 240 evacuees from Western Australia to the island. After landing on Christmas Island the evacuees – who wore face masks and included men, women and children – were met by army and medics and taken to buses. They are to remain on the island for at least 14 days. Meanwhile the parents of Australians have been separated from their families under the government’s travel ban from China because they do not qualify as “immediate family”. Qantas flight crew have raised concerns that the cabin crew responsible for bringing evacuated Australians out of Wuhan will return to work staffing commercial flights around the country without a period of quarantine.
Australia
Queensland Liberal MP Terry Young linked a $500,000 sports grant to “great strategising” that led to victory. In his first speech to parliament this year, Young, who was contesting the Labor-held marginal seat of Longman, referred to Scott Morrison’s visit to a Caboolture sports club on the eve of the election where he announced a $500,000 grant.
The biggest wheat farmer in Australia is again facing charges of illegal land clearing, this time in relation to a property in western New South Wales.
Jacinda Ardern will face the anger of Māori leaders when she visits Waitangi this week after a report branded her government “inhumane” over its removal of children from Indigenous families.
Anna Palmer gave $330,000 to the Nationals while her husband Clive was seeking to re-enter parliament with a preference deal between his United Australia party and the Liberal-National Coalition.
Richard Di Natale has quit as leader of the Australian Greens and will leave politics by the middle of the year. All leadership positions have been spilled, and the Greens will determine their new leadership team on Tuesday.
The world
The Iowa caucuses take place on Monday in the US, kicking off the long process of nominating the Democratic presidential candidate who will eventually take on Donald Trump in November’s US election. On the final day of campaigning, candidates blanketed the state, speaking to overcrowded rallies, overflow rooms and packed campaign offices in a final push to persuade the nearly 50% of caucus-goers who say they may still change their minds. Hundreds of thousands of Iowans are barred from the Iowa caucus because of physical and legal barriers.
Political journalists have boycotted a briefing at No 10 Downing Street after one of Boris Johnson’s aides banned selected reporters from attending.
A second worker at Mexico’s famed monarch butterfly sanctuary has been found murdered, sparking concerns that the defenders of one of Mexico’s most emblematic species are being slain with impunity.
Politics won the Super Bowl, writes Ben Beaumont-Thomas. Jennifer Lopez put children in cages for her Super Bowl attack on Trump’s immigration policies.
Recommended reads
“Drazic quickly emerged as Heartbreak High’s romantic anti-hero, who struggled to shake off a rough upbringing and hold together a lasting romance,” writes Josephine Tovey. In short, he was Heathcliffe on rollerblades, and he could draw a crowd. “Oh my god I remember that,” Mulvey says when I confess – somewhat sheepishly – that I attended an in-store appearance by the cast of Heartbreak High at Parramatta Westfield one Saturday when I was around 12 years old.
Bushfires and the coronavirus will hit Australia’s economy – but they won’t knock it out, writes Greg Jericho: “While the economy remains relatively tepid, it is not all gloom and doom. The bushfires and the coronavirus will almost certainly cause a hit to the economy and the budget balance. It will also most likely mean the Reserve Bank will need to cut rates again earlier than it otherwise might have wished. But talk of a recession is a bit premature.”
Having an only child just kind of happened, writes Jayne Tuttle. “When we had our daughter, we lived in Paris, where life was so cramped and nuts that the thought of adding another human into the mix was inconceivable. It simply didn’t come up. But now we have moved back to Australia, the place seems empty without more children. Australia is wider, we live in a house, there’s more space to fill. But I don’t want another child.”
Listen
On Today in Focus: The importance of Iowa. Chris McGreal visits the first US state to vote in this year’s race for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination. Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are vying for crucial early momentum in the race to take on Trump. Plus: Iman Amrani on modern masculinity.
Sport
Balancing motherhood and professional football has never been made easy but new principles are prompting change, writes Samantha Lewis, as she looks at how the W-League supports its mothers.
Twelve hours later, Patrick Mahomes still could not find better words to describe how he felt, writes Patrick Mahomes. After steering the Kansas City Chiefs to a comeback win over the San Francisco 49ers in Sunday night’s Super Bowl, he had described the moment as “surreal”.
Media roundup
“Chinese students were put in detention, their belongings confiscated and valid visas cancelled, according to university officials, who say Border Force personnel overreacted when flights from China arrived in Australia on Sunday,” the Australian reports. Sydney’s metro rail project will cost $4bn more than what was budgeted, the Sydney Morning Herald reveals. Gladys Berejiklian was “urged to call for logging moratorium to save koalas” in a letter leaked to the ABC.
Coming up
Hundreds of activists will descend on Parliament House to agitate for climate action as both houses return for the first sitting day of the year.
The Chinese embassy in Australia will hold a briefing on the coronavirus outbreak.
And if you’ve read this far …
Donald Trump was among the first to laud the Kansas City Chiefs in the wake of their 31-20 victory over the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl, taking to Twitter to congratulate the newly crowned NFL champions and the “Great State of Kansas”. The only problem: the Chiefs are based in Kansas City, Missouri.
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