Good morning, this is Eleanor Ainge Roy bringing you the main stories and must-reads on Friday 21 December. The morning mail will be on Christmas break after today, but back with you from Monday 7 January. Thank you for reading this year, and looking forward to seeing you next.
Top stories
Australian Border Force staff experienced “alarming levels of sexual harassment and bullying”, discrimination, increasing militarisation and a culture of nepotism and favouritism, an internal review obtained by Guardian Australia has revealed. The exhaustive review of ABF culture reveals staff believed the agency was recruiting trainees who were “cowboys, too aggressive, and too keen to use weapons” after the 2015 amalgamation of customs and immigration. It found serious failings in the agency’s culture and its treatment of women and diverse staff, after examining workplaces in five cities and surveying more than 700 employees. The 2017 review was commissioned by the sacked ABF commissioner Roman Quaedvlieg.
Quaedvlieg told Guardian Australia he had acted after hearing disturbing anecdotes about the treatment of female ABF employees as he walked through major airports, talking with staff. The final report concluded that unconscious bias and discriminatory practices were disproportionately affecting women, older employees, people from different ethnic backgrounds and people with a disability. More than half of staff said “knowing the right people” was a prerequisite for career progression.
The British army has been called in as London’s Gatwick airport remains closed, more than 24 hours after planes were grounded because of drones flying near the runway. There have been chaotic scenes, with more than 100,000 passengers affected by what police described as a deliberate attempt to disrupt flights. Police have been scouring the perimeter to try to catch the drone operators, but said they could not be shot down because of the risk posed by stray bullets. Regulation of drones and unorthodox attempts to bring them down, ranging from nets to trained eagles, have been largely ineffective, writes Alex Hern.
The US and UK have taken the unprecedented step of accusing hackers linked to the Chinese government of waging a sustained cyber-campaign focused on large-scale theft of commercial intellectual property. Two Chinese nationals were charged in the US in relation to a campaign across Europe, Asia and the US that breached Chinese bilateral and international commitments, prosecutors said. The UK Foreign Office and the US indictment allege that a group of non-state employees were operating under the direction and protection of China’s main intelligence agency. “China’s goal, simply put, is to replace the US as the world’s leading superpower and they’re using illegal methods to get there,” said the FBI director, Christopher Wray.
Increased wind and solar generation will help drive power prices down by 2.1% on average in the next two years, according to the Australian Energy Market Commission. The electricity price trend report, released on Friday, reveals that consumers in South Australia can expect the biggest price falls – down $120 a year on average by 2021 – followed by south-east Queensland ($76), Tasmania ($39), NSW ($27) and Victoria ($25). But prices will soar 9.3% in Western Australia, or $156 a year, with rises also expected in the ACT ($87) and the Northern Territory ($47). The report found that lower wholesale power prices would save the typical Australian household $55 a year in the next two years.
The commonwealth faces “unique fraud risks” arising from its management of the $3.2bn portfolio of environmental water in the Murray-Darling Basin, an internal audit has found. The audit, previously withheld from the public, found the Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder was at risk of being defrauded by state agencies, individual officers within those agencies and private landholders. “Taxpayers have spent billions buying water for the environment but it is totally reliant on the state agencies to get the water where it needs to go,” said Maryanne Slattery, a senior water researcher at the Australia Institute. “Worse still, the commonwealth has no legal clout to force states to deliver the water in the way the commonwealth wants.”
Sport
As another big year draws to a close our resident football cartoonist David Squires casts his eye over the mire of Australian football’s end of season awards. And the second time around, it’s more glittery than ever.
Steve Smith has come under criticism for a Vodafone advertising campaign that uses last year’s ball-tampering shame to “spread awareness about mental health”. Smith remains banned from international and state cricket for his part in the Cape Town scandal.
Thinking time
Paul Kelly’s How to Make Gravy has become an Australian Christmas classic. The song captures a poignant phone call made by a man in jail to his brother on 21 December, as he ponders what the rest of the family will be doing on Christmas Day without him. To mark gravy day – as today has come to be known in Australia – here are a few recipes for your Christmas table. Tell us what you think works and what doesn’t – do you add a dollop of tomato sauce?
The government has announced a projected $4.1bn surplus next year, so what should we do with the money? We could increase Newstart, pay Aboriginal people for their land or bank it. Four commentators discuss what they would be doing if they were in government. “The real truth is that, within the limits of its recent variation, the budget surplus or deficit is almost entirely symbolic,” writes John Quiggin of the University of Queensland. “The budget decisions that matter relate to the levels of public investment and public services, and to the maintenance of public sector net worth.”
In September the former publisher and philanthropist John B Fairfax quietly gave $2m to the Nature Conservancy in support of the largest private conservation project ever undertaken in NSW: the Gayini Nimmie-Caira project on the Murrumbidgee floodplain. It was an important signal from one of Australia’s best-known philanthropists that preserving biodiversity is one of the biggest challenges facing the nation. Anne Davies looks at who is funding private conservation and whether it’s making a difference.
What’s he done now?
For the final morning mail of the year, we have decided to give you a break from what he’s done now.
Media roundup
The Victorian Liberal powerbroker Marcus Bastiaan ran persistent campaigns against rival state and federal MPs to push them out, the Age reports. In the Northern Territory, a number of police officers are under internal investigation after a boozy Christmas party in which one demanded free drinks at an inner-city bar, the NT News reports. And the ABC asks why Australian prisons are full of domestic violence victims, with the number of women behind bars continuing to soar.
Coming up
The federal court in Melbourne is due to hand down a decision on the case of the Tamil family formerly of Biloela in Queensland, who have been in detention since March.
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